Many students struggle through school. These problems are sometimes caused by the learning challenges a child faces or a lack of interest in academic work. If your child is facing academic hurdles in school, this does not mean that such child cannot eventually succeed. There are many ways your child can be helped to overcome these hurdles. One of the best solutions available to you as a parent is to have a tutor help your child.
However, there are different tutoring options: tutoring centers, private tutoring, and online tutoring. So what supplementary learning option is ideal for your child?
Here, we consider the pros and cons of each tutoring option. This will help you decide the best option for your child or student.
Learning Centers in Toronto
Toronto’s Best Tutoring centers have a wide range of benefits for a student. Since these centers hire tutors, they often conduct extensive background checks to verify the credentials of a potential tutor. Tutoring centers have other important benefits too.
Pros of Learning Centers in Toronto
- Finding a tutor with the experience, skills, and training methods needed to help a student with certain learning disabilities – or help your child excel in school or prepare for specific tests, is a hassle-free process.
- Tutoring centers have a wide “variety” of tutors under their employ, so it is easy to find one that can work with your schedule as well as fit your child’s needs perfectly.
Cons of Learning Centers in Toronto
Though tutoring centers have their own advantages, there are still certain drawbacks:
- Using a tutoring or learning center means appointments must be scheduled based on their hours of operation. In today’s fast-paced, ever busy world, getting a tutoring center that works with a specific time that suits your schedule can be especially daunting.
- You have to take your child to the location of the tutoring center – and fitting this plan into your busy schedule may be difficult.
Private Tutoring Toronto
Private tutoring has lots of advantages for a child.
Pros of Private Tutoring in Toronto
- Working at the Student’s Pace: Generally, lesson plans taken in the classroom are fast moving and time sensitive. With a private tutor, lessons can be taught at a slower pace, allowing the student an opportunity to ask as many questions as they desire without the high pressures of the classroom.
- Personal Attention: In most cases, classes consist of up to 25 to 30 students, and this can make it difficult for teachers to carry everyone along all of the time. This often causes a feeling of neglect among some students especially if they need some extra assistance. Having a private tutor is like working with a teacher who is only concerned about your child. They will be able to provide answers to questions as long as it will require for your child to get a full understanding of the curriculum. In addition, a private tutor will get to know the preferred learning style of your child and adapt teaching methods to complement the student’s needs.
- Flexibility and Convenience: Having a private tutor for your child is especially great if you have a busy schedule. You can easily adjust your child’s lessons to fit both your plans and the needs of your child. If, for instance, your child usually has one lesson weekly but will need some help for mid-terms, you can arrange for the number of lesson sessions to be increased as you see fit. Tutoring is also convenient when it takes place in the comfort of your home, without the need to transport your child to and from tutoring centers.
- Specific Goals and Objectives: While at school, there is usually little emphasis on creating individualized goals for children. It is the priority of a private tutor to help a child set attainable goals, and more importantly, help them achieve these goals.
Cons of Private Tutoring in Toronto
While having a private tutor promises several benefits, there are also a few cons that you must consider before you work with one.
- Cost: The cost involved in having a private tutor can run anywhere from $20-$100 per hour. In addition to this, you may also have to cover the travel costs of the tutor.
- Background Checks: Having a private tutor work with your child means you will have to conduct background checks on the tutor yourself, and this can be time-consuming. However, this endeavor is made easier with the presence of tutoring services that now provide experienced, well-educated, and subject-savvy tutors.
Online Tutoring Toronto
A third option which is neither private tutoring nor a tutoring center, is online tutoring. This has become a popular resource in recent years. Staffed by top-level professionals and powered by modern technology, online tutoring offers a wide range of benefits for a child and his/her parent.
Pros of Online Tutoring in Toronto
- Convenience: Rather than travel to a learning center to make certain enquiries, or conduct background checks to verify the credentials of a private tutor, you can find, and work with an online tutor from the convenience of your home. And since most online tutors are flexible, they can work with your schedule as per your availability.
- Cost-effective: The costs involved in setting up an online tutorial is minimal. As such, tutors charge per hourly rates for online lessons. You also get to save money on transportation since you do not have to travel with your child for any tutorials.
- Access to Previous Sessions: One major benefit of working with online tutorials is that you can record sessions and replay them at your own accessibility. This goes a long way to reinforce the learning and can help the child do revisions before tests or exam, giving the student a competitive edge over others in school.
- Remote Access to Top Professionals: It is likely that you may not find a suitable tutor in your locality. Rather than settling for a tutor who is not up to your desired standards, online tutoring allows you work with experts in different subject areas.
Cons of Online Tutoring in Toronto
- Not Effective for All Subject Areas: In foreign language lessons, for instance, a student has to follow particular mouth movements of the teacher to better understand the pronunciation, and this is hardly effective with online tutoring. In addition, if a student’s homework requires drawing on a paper, an online tutoring class may not be as effective.
- Communication Barriers: Body language plays a major role in the in a student-teacher communication process. Simple non-verbal cues such as the scratching of the forehead or a frown on the face may tell the teacher the student is distracted. These signs often go unnoticed with online tutoring.
- Requires Strong Self-discipline: Online lessons require higher level of discipline in terms of keeping away social media distractions, working with specific logging in times, and keeping track of the lessons. If a student is not organized and disciplined, this learning method may be ineffective.
Taking into account all the benefits that tutoring centers, private tutoring, and online tutoring offer, it would be ideal for parents to gather as much information as possible before working with a tutor. Luckily, TutorONE – a personalized tutoring service in Toronto, has effectively combined all of the benefits of online tutoring, private tutoring, and tutoring centers to offer students quality learning from professional tutors. All of our tutors have the best possible credentials – and they work with you to ensure tutoring sessions are arranged at your convenience. Indeed, TutorONE is redefining tutoring in Toronto.