Home tutoring is like homeschooling which a few Westerners are known to practice. It is more like having to do educational activities from the confines of the home but as we Africans or better still Nigerians, home tutoring is an after-school educational activity where you pay someone to come to the house after school to revise, help with assignments and teach your kids more extensively and personally with educational materials. More often than normal, it’s a teacher at the kid's school who is the home lesson teacher. There is not much stereotyping here as both male and female teachers can be home tutors. The only stereotypic thing is that it’s uncommon for a male teacher to home tutor a nursery/primary school pupil, or for a woman to tutor a secondary school student. It is not sexist, it’s just how few the minority that is doing this that it’s become a stereotype. In the course of the article, the advantages and dangers of home lessons would be discussed.
Starting positively, home lessons with a good and dedicated teacher can help your kid’s performance in school. This is because he or she is taught personally and it is brought down to the level they understand it and they can easily ask questions without feeling shy. The home tutor could also help them to work on their confidence too and sharpen their skills too. With a home tutor who has the future material of the child’s syllabus, the child can be ahead of the class and have an idea of the topic when they are eventually taught in class. So having a good home tutor would make your child smarter and they would make them pick up in their studies, as the teacher can work on the areas that the child might be lacking or having issues in.
On a possibly more negative point, having a home tutor could be quite dangerous, especially for students in secondary school. It is mostly during this period of the child’s life that they hit puberty which could be a very confusing moment for the child and could be a disastrous time if not handled with good care. Around this time of the child’s life, they learn to grow certain feelings or emotions that could be easily manipulated if trapped by the wrong person. A home tutor of the opposite sex uses a target for such emotions because those home tutors are no family members who come around the comfort of their homes, as they tend to get open with their home tutors. A predatory home tutor could take advantage of the unsuspecting teen. The more alarming part is how easily it goes by so unnoticed by the parents and some teens who don’t know they are being molested till they are possibly in the University or the tutor is long gone and even worse goes unpunished.
For the tutor caught in such a situation and is probably trying not to get into any wrong activities it could be even harder. It becomes hard to tell the parents who become suspicious and feel the best solution would be to fire the tutor rather than talking to the teen about her feelings, how to have the right feelings, and how to control those feelings. The tutor is now caught between teaching the child and being a part-term parent/therapist to the feeling-catching teen. This becomes difficult and some get successful, some give in to the temptation with the majority just quitting altogether to avoid an ugly situation. If a tutor quits by stating a reason and the family just employs another one, the new tutor might take advantage of that feeling.
The puberty-triggered feelings of students are not the only thing that causes ill feelings between child and home tutor. The tutor could be one who might have been the person who triggered those feelings. Probably with ulterior motives and being seductive or suggestive with the child. Whether intentional or unknowingly, children tend to pick up on a lot of things we do without realizing it. There have been lots of students and home tutors having undue knowledge of each other even with below teens children. Lots of the cases go unreported because of the fear of stigmatization
There have been good and bad parts of having a home tutor for the furtherance of your child’s educational life. So below are solutions to having the best home tutor for your household. Having a good home tutor could be advantageous for your child.
Hard screening for your home tutor, as a parent you have to extensively screen any candidate that wants to home tutor your child. Even though the teacher is coming from the child’s school, which is better because they can be held accountable there. It is less scary if the teacher is from your kid's school, but as a parent that doesn’t mean you should relent in your efforts to properly scrutinize the teacher and consult the school authority on the diligence of the teacher. The school would be in a good position to determine if that tutor is the best fit for your house and recommend another one that might be more drilled when it comes to home tutoring.
Another important aspect that every parent with a home tutor should take note of is building a communicative relationship with their child/ward. As a parent who wants to have a home tutor or already has a home tutor for your kid, you must learn to go closer to the child and know how the child relates with the tutor and if there is anything they might want to change or correct. Let your child be able to confide in you as a parent. Notice that you should already have a communication relationship with your children but if it has been lacking in an anyway before that time, there would be a need to step it up and build a comfortable feeling when they are around you. They should be able to confide in you as a parent about a lot of things, not just when there is a tutor to be wary of.
As I heard from a private school teacher that parents in recent years have pulled their children/wards from expensive private schools to cheaper ones and then employ a credible home tutor to complete the child's school curriculum, in any way they might be lacking. So home tutoring has come to stay and over the years has seen its value increase as more parents have seen it as a viable option. From ritrends.com stay tuned.
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