WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
Come Tuesday I’ll have 30(ish) young, eager faces looking at me on their first day at ‘big’ school. That’s right folks, I’m going to be a Year 7 tutor! Being a tutor was something I loved doing at my previous school - in fact I considered it the most important part of my job. As I prepare for next week I’ve been thinking about ways in which I can be the best tutor I can be - with a little help from Stephen Adams’ A Guide to Creative Tutoring (which I picked up from a library sale for about 10p…) 
1. Create a formal but relaxed atmosphere - there’s a fine line between a productive, working atmosphere and one which is either too constrained or too laid-back. There’s different methods to achieve this type of atmosphere but most of the ideas below tend to help to create it - just keep it at the back of your mind that this is what you’re trying to achieve: sometimes you’ll have to be stricter, sometimes more laid back, but it’s the ’smart casual’ of classroom atmosphere that you’re aiming for… 
2. Listen to your students - it’s an obvious point but a true one: every student is different and therefore every class is different. In order to treat your students as individuals - and therefore as human beings you’ll have to respond to how they are not how you expect them to be. You can do this by listening to them, by being interested in what they have to say, and by not trying to elicit information that can be put into a ‘box’ all the time.
3. Don’t be false - if anyone can see straight through an ‘act’, teenagers can. Adams, in A Guide to Creative Tutoring talks about ‘congruency’, or making sure your overt behaviour matches what is going on inside. This will avoid coming across as patronising or duplicitous. Sometimes, of course, this is not appropriate (which will be dealt with in point 9 below…)
4. Monitor your students - tutors, more than ever these days, have a duty to monitor their tutees. How this is done differs from school to school, but the principles remain the same. The better you get to know each individual member of your tutor group, the better you can gauge changes, trends, moods, relationships, capacities, talents and problems. The tutor is one of the few members of staff in a school that sees students in a non-subject-specific environment and is therefore well-placed to give the ‘bigger picture’. Schools are not just places where we ‘fill’ students heads with ‘knowledge’. Make sure that you know this ‘bigger picture’ of each student by ensuring you interact with each student in your tutor group and not just those who crave attention! 
5. Encourage self-organization - although unstructured tutor time is frowned upon these days, it can be useful in moderation to develop students’ skills of self-organization. If you model good organizational skills and develop their capacities to self-organize through various activities and reminders, then unstructured time can be their opportunity to put those skills into practice. This, of course, all comes down to trusting your tutees and having a good relationship with them. Encourage students to keep a record of their achievements and even their problems and ways they can overcome them. Developing a long-term view is an important stage in growing up (especially in this increasingly short-termist, instantly-gratifying, media-driven world)
6. Refer potential problems - no tutor group goes through a school year without either problems between its members or problems as a whole group. Often these are caused by individuals whose problems, in turn, are caused by things in the wider world. As a tutor it’s your job to inform those who are perhaps better placed (Heads of Year/House, Social Services, even the police) about context. It’s a case of knowing your limits in terms of responsibility and power. Do all you can then refer it onwards and upwards.
7. Gain authority through respect - I always tell students that there’s two ways to obtain respect - through playing up to other people and having them laugh and joke with you, or through doing what you’re good at well and trying hard iat the things you’re not. The same goes for being a tutor: you can be ‘respected’ (in the ‘being popular’ sense) without really being ‘respected’ (in the sense of ‘being esteemed’). The latter way you can build up through gaining students consent for your authority. How do you do this? Through consistency (see point 9) and through acting in ways which are obviously in the best long-term interests of your tutees. Students have to feel that you know what it’s like to be in their position. If they don’t, they’re unlikely to give you the respect you need to be in authority over them in any real and meaningful sense.
8. Treat all students equitably - DON’T treat students equally. How can you? Do you treat your grandmother the same as your brother? Each individual has their own character, just as every class has its own collective character. If you terated every tutee ‘equally’ you would be doing them a disservice as you wouldn’t be responding to their needs, desires, hopes and dreams. Instead, treat them equitably. Don’t show favour of bias, even when some students are harder to like than others. Although it’s a cliche, try to separate the behaviour from the student and treat them as human beings and worthy of dignity and respect, independent of their actions.
9. Be consistent - something which is said over and over again by teachers everywhere, but nevertheless absolutely true. Students will understand if you’re having a bad day - small fluctuations in interpersonal relations are nothing. What this type of consistency is focused upon is expectations and methods of conduct more than anything - what in the old days people might have called ’standards’…. 
10. Build the group - finally, you need to consciously do things which will build a ‘family’-type atmosphere in your tutor group. These are not homogenization-encouraging activities, but those which serve to strengthen trust bonds and encourage one another to share, listen and ‘be there’ for one another. This obviously takes time and becomes easier the longer you have the group, but group cohesion is seldom something that ‘just happens’.
I’d be interested to hear people’s opinion on the above list. Is there anything you’d add? Disagree with? Change slightly? I and other readers would value your contribution! 
Popularity: 6% [?]
