Finding good tutors (and why any warm body won’t do)

SmarBrief

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No matter how a school chooses to rethink tutoring, the human connection is key. 

“Tutors should have a strong background and understanding of specific subject matters, but also be very warm and relatable and connect well with children both emotionally and socially,” Meyers says. “The connection that's built between those two over time is helping students learn how to gain support, how to cope and how to mentally navigate challenges.

Relationships like that take time to develop. “It is often easier to train a tutor on content than it is to train a tutor on relationship-building and tutoring approach,” Susanna Loeb, director of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and education professor, tells SmartBrief, noting that content knowledge is more of a factor when working with upper-grade math students or multilingual students. 

The Annenberg Institute’s “District Playbook” features a Recruiting and Selecting Tutors section. The Toolkit for Tutoring Programs offers sample tutor job descriptions and other templates

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