Tutors International has pooled some homeschooling tips from their tutors to help guide parents and guardians.
Homeschooling Tips
Elite residential tutoring company, Tutors International, has pooled advice from some of their tutors currently on placements. They know better than anyone how to offer effective high-quality education in the home, especially within the constraints of a pandemic. As featured in Vanity Fair, The Telegraph and Forbes, Tutors International’s world-class tutors are the ultimate guides for parents seeking advice on home education.
Read some of their top homeschooling tips below:
1. Respect and Consistency
It’s hard being both parent and teacher, but one of the tutors reinstates the importance of mutual respect:
“Create a respectful rapport with the student (the one-to-one environment demands this). Then, find a route through the teaching that applies consistent, even pressure, so that they have the feeling of constant (but manageable) challenge and improvement.”
2. Avoid Comparisons
If you’re teaching multiple children at home, this is a great point to take on board:
“Comparison is the enemy of nurturing an independent mind. Comparisons between siblings/students can be pretty toxic within a home-school environment. Avoid comparison between homeschooling and schooling – they are 2 very different enterprises and comparison can be limiting to the imagination and the possibilities of tutoring.”
3. Make it Individualised
A tutor gives direct advice to students experiencing homeschooling:
“Read and follow your interests. If you have no interests then just read. This will bring the myriad elements within the world to you from which you can start just about anything. It is also worth getting lost in a project because the skills you gain in doing so will transfer to other areas of study. Finally, never think there is something you can’t do… the flexibility of homeschooling allows you to engage in a world as if it was made just for you! No queues, no waiting for others to settle down, the road ahead is wide open to chase the things you love and ignite your interests.”
4. Balance Goals and Opportunity
A tutor advises: “plan around or work back from the “big picture” goals while staying flexible and open to new experiences, resources and opportunities which might come up along the way.”
5. A Visual Timetable
Having a physical timetable is an easy and effective tool. One tutor comments:
“I think one of the most difficult aspects of homeschooling for children is coping with a lack of routine. I found a visual timetable to be a very useful way of giving children the structure they are missing, while also allowing for some flexibility as the children can choose the order of the tasks within the time frame. It is also very important to timetable some physical activity each day and some time outdoors wherever possible.”
6. Encourage Autonomy
Avoid spoon-feeding information to them:
“Empower learners to make decisions and take ownership over the course of their learning. This does not mean leaving them to their own devices. On the contrary - it requires your full attention, your reassurance, availability and the space you create for them.”
