Most conversations with a prospective tutor cover price, schedule and subject, and stop there. Those are the easy parts. The questions that predict whether it will work are less obvious, and they take about ten minutes to ask.
1. What will you do in the first two sessions?
You want to hear something about finding out where the student actually is. “We’ll work through whatever homework she brings” describes supervision. A tutor who plans to diagnose before teaching is offering something different.
2. How many students are in the room, and who teaches them?
“Small group” is not a number. Ask for the number, and ask whether the person teaching is the person you are speaking to. Some centres are sold by an owner and delivered by rotating part-time staff, which is not automatically bad but you should know.
3. How well do you know the BC curriculum?
Specifically: the Pre-Calculus versus Foundations split, what Chemistry 12 covers, how provincial assessments work. A tutor who does not know which course your child should be in cannot advise you on the thing that matters most.
4. What happens when my child gets a question wrong?
The answer you want involves finding out why. A wrong answer caused by a misread question, a sign error, a missing concept and a confidence wobble are four different problems needing four different responses. A tutor who treats them identically is marking, not teaching.
5. How will I know whether it is working?
A good answer sets expectations beyond marks – because the next test may be on a topic already missed. Look for something about the student’s independence, or the specificity of the questions they start asking. Anyone promising a particular percentage by a particular date is guessing.
6. What do you expect from my child between sessions?
Tutoring that only happens in the room does not build much. There should be some expectation of practice in between – modest and specific, not a second set of homework.
7. What if it is not a good fit?
Ask what happens if, after a month, it clearly is not working. The answer tells you whether you are dealing with a business that expects to earn the relationship or one that expects to keep it by default. Ask about contracts, notice periods and whether you can change tutors.
8. Can we try one session before committing?
Any confident tutor will say yes. A single session shows you more than any conversation: whether your child talks during it, whether they are holding the pen, and how they describe it afterwards.
Ours is a $50 trial group class – not free, deliberately, because a free trial tends to attract people who are not really deciding. But it is one class, with no obligation.
Two things worth checking that are not questions
Look at how the tutor talks about students in general. Anyone who describes struggling students as lazy or unmotivated will eventually describe your child that way.
And notice whether they ask you anything. A tutor who takes the booking without asking what the student is finding hard, what has already been tried, or what the goal is has not started thinking about your child yet.
What we would say to our own questions
We diagnose before teaching. Groups stay small enough that the tutor sees every student work in every session. Sessions are two hours, twice a week for small-group students, or hourly one-on-one. There is no contract – you start with a trial class and decide from there.
Details are on the programmes and pricing page. To ask anything else, call 604-725-6845 or get in touch.
