Published: July 23, 2019
When most people think about education, they think about schools. But the reality is that while primary, secondary, and tertiary schools are where the bulk of formal education happens, children learn just as much if not more outside the classroom — from their parents, their peers, recreational activities like sports and music, and even the books they read in their leisure time.
This extracurricular learning feeds into mainstream academic success, which means that if you want your child to succeed in school, you need to conceive of their education as a team effort that involves not only you and your child’s teacher, but also their coaches, other instructors, and tutors.
Understanding education as a team exercise is particularly important for Toronto parents concerned about how deep education cuts are going to effect their children’s opportunities in life.
One of the reasons parents get in touch with us at Prep Academy Tutors is simply to find out what kind of options exist to expand their child’s academic horizons and make it easier for them to chart a way forward at a time when public education is facing significant cuts across Ontario. All parents want their children to do well, but the unfortunate truth is that many schools lack the funds and resources to ensure that all children get the support they need for academic success.
The good news is that there are many ways that tutoring services in Toronto can serve to provide exactly the kind of extra help parents and primary and secondary educators in Toronto need in order to provide children with the best chance of success.
If you want to know how tutoring can play a role in the team effort that is your child’s education, here are three things to keep in mind.
Tutoring Builds on Your Child’s Current Curriculum
There is a common misconception that tutoring largely exists to respond to individual problems (overcoming math anxiety, for example). And while tutors can be highly effective at strategic interventions related to specific performance concerns, many families hire tutors to work alongside their children through their regular curriculum, checking in every week to provide the extra support kids often need to process the material they are learning day-to-day.
Tutoring that is specifically meant to complement your child’s curriculum is particularly useful in times when large class sizes make it difficult for them to get the kind of one-on-one attention most children need to master difficult concepts from their teacher.
Because many of the tutors we hire have extensive teaching experience themselves, they are uniquely positioned to help your children work through the provincial curriculum for whatever subject they are struggling in. If you need an accounting tutor in Toronto for example, we can connect you with a qualified teacher who, in addition to being accredited to teach math and physics, has also taught accounting within the private education system in Ontario and knows its requirements well.
Tutors Improve Overall Confidence
One of the central goals of any education program, formal or informal, should be to help people of all ages develop the confidence and skills needed to engage with the world and solve problems on their own.
There is a growing body of academic research linking self-confidence to performance and achievement, and one of the most important things that primary education in particular should impart is confidence in one’s basic abilities to overcome learning difficulties with sufficient work and effort.
This is an area of education that Ontario’s schools — and schools in some parts of Toronto in particular — are not always well positioned to deliver, due to constraints on resources and the time teachers can spend with each student. While extra-curricular activities play an essential role in building confidence for children of all ages, it is still important for parents and tutors to help channel that confidence into academic performance as well.
One of the ways you can ensure that your child builds the kind of confidence they will need in order to succeed in university and later the workplace (where they will have to function more independently) is by providing tutoring help specifically geared toward helping children learn the skills and tools they need for independent learning.
Tutoring Gives Your Child Room to Take Risks
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in order to learn, you must make mistakes. But making mistakes in front of a classroom of other kids can be incredibly embarrassing, and shy or sensitive children may opt to stay quiet rather than risk getting a question wrong.
While it is an understandable impulse, over the long term this can have deeply negative consequences. Learning that taking a chance is sometimes rewarded — and learning how to deal with failure when it isn’t — is a necessary parts of any modern education, and if kids are reluctant to take these chances in class, parents need to find other, safer, ways for them to take risks.
If you want to learn how tutors can play a role in providing your child with a safe learning environment where they can explore ideas and concepts without worrying about looking foolish in front of their peers, contact us today to learn more about our teaching philosophy. Our tutors can offer instruction in your home, which means that your children can face the challenges of learning in a familiar and supportive environment.
The tutors we work with understand that the role they are playing is not merely academic, but also about building up confidence and skills in the kids they are working with. Perhaps more importantly, they understand that they are part of an educational team that includes you, the teacher, and a whole number of other people who are all working together.
For parents who want to make sure that their children will still get the best education possible, regardless of what future cuts may be coming to Toronto’s public education system, adding a tutor to your child’s education team is essential.