5 Ways to Get to Know Your Tutor
A tutor is someone who chooses to dedicate a large portion of time in helping their pupil to grow and flourish in the subject or subjects that the pupil might be having trouble with.
Your tutor does a lot for you and you appreciate it, right? But, you might have recently discovered that you really don’t know that much about your tutor besides how talented they are in English and that they have a real gift for teaching. There are ways to get to know who your tutor is, though!
Here are five ways for getting to know your tutor better.
1. Suggest a “Get to Know You” game
A fun and easy way to get to know your tutor is to play a game that will give you both a chance to talk about something outside of your academic tutoring. There are many games that two people can play in order to get to know one another better and many of them can be a lot of fun to play.
One example is a game called Two Truths, One Lie. In this game, one person has to tell two truthful statements and one false statement about themselves. The other person will try to guess which statement is the false one. For more fun, try to make the false statement something believable and one of the truthful ones something incredibly zany or unexpected that you have done or like to do. This is a great way to see another side of your tutor and to get to know them as a person rather than just a teacher.
Another game you could suggest to play together is a non-drinking version of Never Have I Ever. In this version of the game, both players will hold up all of their fingers. One person will start the game by saying “Never have I ever …” and then finish the sentence by saying something that you’ve never done.
For example, you could say, “Never have I ever been bungee jumping” or “Never have I ever been to Africa.” If your tutor has done the statement that you’ve said you’ve never done, they will lower one finger. Then it’s your tutor’s turn to say a “never have I ever” statement. Continue playing until one person has all fingers down. Whoever puts all of their fingers down first wins!
For a list of other ice-breaking games that you and your tutor can play to get to know one another, check out this website.
2. Suggest going to your tutor’s favorite study spot for your next session
Suggesting to head to your tutor’s favorite area to study will give you some new insight on your tutor. You’ll get to see what kinds of places interest them. You can ask why they chose this area and what makes the area special to them.
It will also give you both a chance to change up what might be your daily location for studying, which has the chance of becoming monotonous after a while.
3. Go to a new area for your lesson
You could also be the one to suggest going to a new area, maybe to a favorite spot of yours. Especially proud of your favorite study area? Why not give your tutor a guided tour around the area?
If your favorite place to study is in the local library, you could show your tutor where your favorite books are located in that library, which librarian is the nicest, where the best places to sit and read a book are, or if there any fun events going on there soon.
Let your tutor know why this spot is a favorite area of yours and then give them the chance to show you theirs.
4. Suggest an outing together with your family
Time to get to know your tutor outside of your scheduled tutoring session! Your grades have been showing improvement. You feel brave enough to raise your hand and answer questions in class. Lessons that seemed impossible to get through before are now a breeze.
Your tutor has turned your bad grade around and gave you a whole new way of understanding of the subject that was giving you trouble. School’s going great! Not only are you grateful, but your parents or guardians are grateful.
Find time to sit down with your parents and ask if you all could come together to do something that would show your tutor how grateful your family is for all of the help. You could take your tutor out to eat at their favorite restaurant, invite them along on the next family vacation, or have them over for dinner.
Whatever you choose to do, this will be a good time for you to get to know your tutor outside of “work.”
5. Ask about their interests
One of the easiest ways to get to know someone is to simply ask questions. After your next tutoring session has finished, feel free to ask questions about your tutor. You can ask what their favorite book is, where they’re from, or how they became a tutor. Your tutor will most likely be happy that you are genuinely interested and care about learning more about them.
It’s great to have a tutor. Once you get to know more about them, you may discover that your tutor is even cooler than you thought.