 Hey everyone, welcome to Tutor Terrific. In this video, I'm going to give you my three keys to a successful tutoring session. Whether you're just starting out in tutoring, looking at tutoring for the first time because you're interested in helping students or you have many years' experience, it's important to understand that tutoring is an art form. It's something you can prepare for, practice at, and get better at in order to help students be successful. Throughout my 11 years of tutoring experience at the collegiate level, high school, and middle school level, I've found three important takeaways from my experience that lead to the success of my students' time and time again. The first thing is to come to a session and prepare. That's the most important. Now that looks different whether you're doing drop-in style tutoring or appointment style tutoring. For one-on-one appointment style tutoring, you need to do a good job in that introductory meeting and make it a priority to have one, whether that's over the phone with the parents or the student or in person. An introductory meeting can help set the stage for a great tutoring session. This can involve doing a little research about the school the students go to, knowing their teachers, knowing the school curriculum. But if you don't have access to that, ask a lot of questions of the parents. The parents and the students want to dive into that information because it helps them process their situation. And the more information you have, the better equipped you are for a successful first session. Your preparation may involve, if you can tell that the clients would like that, your content preparation before the session. If you sense that, ask the parents or students for study guides, syllabi, or homework examples from the class. This will help orient you perfectly to what they need right then at that first session. And always remember this, do not attempt to tutor a student in a subject you have not started, taken, or finished. This will set you up for failure and disaster in that first session when you look unprepared. Now, in a drop-in tutoring scenario, it's much harder to prepare because you don't have any prior notice of the students coming in. All they know is that the tutoring center you work at is there to help them. Now, what you need to do yourself to prepare for that is to make clear to the center which subjects you are prepared to tutor. Make sure these are classes or subjects you have already taken and excelled so that you yourself are equipped with that knowledge you need. In the drop-in tutoring scenario, there's less expectation, but they still want success. And again, do not tutor in subjects that you have never studied or finished. My second key to tutoring success is to make sure you act professionally in all interactions prior to the session. In that first introductory meeting or that first handshake, be comforting and confidence building. There are a lot of answers that these clients need or these potential clients need. In their initial inquiries, you need to be comforting and confidence building in your responses. You should also be upfront about your availability, your fees, your preferred locations for tutoring and your preferred session types. If you have this stuff organized, you look prepared to that first client or that new client that wants to work with you. Do not hesitate to refer to another tutor if you figure that you are unequipped to handle the requirements such as not having taken the class or not being able to meet their requirements for time and maybe they can't afford your fees. You will assume the confidence and the expertise in these situations when you have someone to refer to. So make sure you have that in your back pocket. Also, right before that first session, plan to arrive ahead of the appointment time at the location with all the materials you need. Make sure you know where to go and how to get there and it's somewhere you're familiar with. Make sure to have your whiteboard, your markers, your eraser, any agreements or contracts that need to be signed, pencils, erasers and water and even a snack so that you are energized and ready to focus on that student. Now my third and final key in this video to a successful tutoring session may be the most important. While it's important to be prepared and professional before the session, what happens during the session makes the largest impact. You need to focus on the 2-T, not yourself. The focus needs to be on the person you're helping so that they build confidence, not you. So be quick to listen and slow to speak. Now for extraverted 2-T's this will be easy to do because they'll want to talk a lot more and be heard. But introverts might need a little more help. Some questions you might have for them might help get the conversation going. Do not direct attention to your own abilities, your experience and your own accolades. This does not build confidence in the person you're helping. If you try and set up the situation where you are much higher above them in your abilities. I challenge you to try to match the personality as best you can to the 2-T. Matching personalities allows that student to feel more comfortable in the session. Now I know that's more difficult for some people than others, but again if you're focused on the 2-T you will do that to some degree naturally in order to help them and give them some success in their first session. And the highest priority for you is to find those and capitalize on those aha moments where they finally understand something. In either science, math, history, writing, whatever you're doing you can find those places to capitalize on those moments where something has clicked for them. And if you can get them to focus on the fact that they learned something or understood something for the first time you will have them understand that they're making improvements and are building their own confidence as they go. I hope you enjoyed this video on my three keys to successful tutoring session. If you have any questions or comments please leave a comment in the comment section below. Thank you guys so much for watching and look forward to more videos on this topic soon. This is Falconator signing out.