After all, tutoring allows you to teach on your own terms. This means that you have greater freedom when putting together a curriculum and the number of students under your care. You’re also less likely to spend your free time reading papers or marking essays. This means that you can keep your passion for teaching alive, without putting your well-being on the back burner.

With that in mind, here are some top tips for becoming an excellent tutor.

Offer hybrid tutoring services

Some students learn best face-to-face, whereas others perform just as well when learning online. This means that offering both services is a great way to ensure that you’re catering to each student’s specific needs and learning style.

Furthermore, offering hybrid services is a great way to expand your reach, ensuring that you have enough students in your books to stay afloat financially. 

Create your own bespoke courses

Whether you are offering general tutoring for a specific age group or focusing on a specific subject, developing your own bespoke course is a great way to take your tutoring business to the next level. This is because students can benefit daily from your support, as opposed to merely learning during your sessions. 

One way in which you can achieve this goal is by designing your own course on Classful, a platform that is widely considered to be one of the best online education sites for educators. Your digital programs can contain everything from recorded lectures and workbooks to exams that track participant progress, all of which is incredibly useful moving forward. 

Stay organized

Organization is key when working as a tutor, especially as it often requires you to become your own boss. After all, you’ll struggle to present yourself as a reputable tutor if you’re constantly late to sessions or if you forget to respond to parent messages. 

While your day-to-day routine will become a lot more flexible, try to stick to a consistent schedule where you can. This way, you’ll feel much more organized and on top of things.

Find ways to heighten student engagement

The more students are engaged in your tutoring sessions, the more they will learn. This will also have a positive impact on their performance at school, especially if they are coming to you for help with a topic they find particularly difficult to wrap their head around. Fortunately, there are many different ways in which you can heighten student engagement, including: 

• Asking students about their preferred learning methods and styles

• Creating lessons that require students to take on an active role, as opposed to sitting passively

• Incorporating creativity and play into your sessions 

• Providing students with positive feedback and guidance

• Explaining clearly when they have made a mistake, without leaving them feeling demoralized

• Letting them know they can ask as many questions as they want during your tutoring sessions 

Adapt to each student

Working as a tutor often means working with students one-on-one, which can be a little difficult to get used to if you’re more accustomed to working from an overcrowded classroom. However, a major benefit of this teaching method is that you can tailor the support you offer directly to each student. Pay attention to their unique needs, learning and communication styles, and factor this into your future lesson plans or teaching sessions. This will make your time together a lot more fun for everyone involved, and it ensures that students are likely to learn at a much quicker rate, too. 

You should also regularly ask students (or their parents) for some feedback on what you could be doing better. This is a great way to ensure that you’re on the right track, even if you may not be used to receiving this kind of feedback. 

Ask for referrals

In order to truly succeed as a tutor, you need to make sure that you’re working with as many students as possible. Otherwise, you may find that you have to start looking out for additional work too, which can pull your focus away from what really matters to you. One way in which you can make this a little easier is by asking for referrals. 

This is because people are more likely to trust tutors who come highly recommended by others, as they know they’ll be spending their money and their child’s time wisely. It also means that they know that they can trust you moving forward.  In some cases, you may want to incentivize referrals by offering referees a certain number of free sessions. 

Alternatively, you could ask them for testimonials that you can then add to your site. If you want to stand out a little bit, consider asking the students to write the recommendations instead. This is something that many parents will find endearing, as it shows that you are prioritizing student satisfaction above all else. 

Final thoughts

If you are currently toying with the idea of leaving the teaching profession behind, you are not alone. However, this does not mean that you have to leave the entire education sector behind, especially if there’s still a lot you enjoy about this profession. After all, becoming a tutor allows you to experience the joys of teaching without the same level of stress or responsibility.

Furthermore, following the guide above will help you to become an excellent tutor in no time!