Ask many professional athletes and they will tell you that it was the hours spent one-on-one with a coach that set them apart from their average counterpart. One doesn’t typically achieve high-calibre skillset necessary for professional athletics on talent alone. To go pro, you need an edge. And for many pros, that edge comes in the form of an expert trainer guiding them as they sharpen their skills.
Performance artists, such as actors and musicians, often rely on professional training to hone their crafts. Whether they are tuning their vocal cords and character accents with the help of a voice coach or entrusting their muscles to the expertise of a personal trainer at the gym, stars sing the praises of their skilled coaches.
Personal coaching allows athletes, musicians, actors, and all types of professionals to supercharge their learning experiences. Under private tutelage, trainees are able to set goals that are far beyond the reach of what might be considered average, and they are able to reach those goals faster than an individual working on his or her own.
The power of one-on-one coaching is not just for training in highly specialized professions. At Mentorhood, we leverage the power of the personal coach and as a result, we get to see countless students find success—and even a hint of greatness—in their mathematics studies every year.
Expert Efficiency
Individual coaching is far more efficient than group learning could ever be. Returning to the example of professional acting, in a typical three-hour class, ten students might get shy of twenty minutes each to work on their piece with feedback from the coach, while the rest of the time is spent learning by watching their peers do the same.
The average school classroom is no different. Thirty students may be learning all at once, forcing the teacher to cater the lesson plan to the middle of the group. A single student may get to work on an example on the board for the class to see, but most of the individual work is done through homework assignments away from the teacher who has limited time to help each student with their questions.
Consider a private coaching session instead. Rather than getting a few minutes in class to be vocal and a few minutes at the end of class to ask for clarification, in a private coaching setting, the attention is one hundred percent focused on the individual student. Students have the potential to receive more instruction in one of such sessions than in an entire day at school.
Such efficiency not only allows for them to advance through material faster, comparing material coverage on a minute-to-minute basis, but also provides room for pausing and asking the crucial questions that they might have tripped over in a classroom setting. This is of huge significance—it’s the difference between leaving knowledge gaps that provide a poor foundation for unknown future topics that are hard to find later, versus pouring a foundation smoothly and gap-free from the outset.
Tailor-Made Training
A good coach will prepare an athlete for the specific trials and competition they are likely to face. They may even train their athletes in scenarios that are more rigorous than what may be experienced during a competition. On the contrary, little time will be spent on scenarios that are completely irrelevant or—if you’ll pardon the pun—out of left field.
Math coaching is no different. An individual coach will be able to adapt their training according to their learner’s needs. Where a learner may already be strong, a teacher can take this as a cue to either provide more challenging material or divert time away in favour of other unfamiliar topics. For a topic that’s providing more difficulty, in accord with the student and parent’s goals, the teacher can provide the space for the learning to take its time.
This adaptive flexibility adds another dimension to the efficiency of individual coaching; in a group class, a prior-trained student may be stuck for several lessons on a topic they’ve already mastered, while a more apprehensive student may find a topic glossed over too quickly before they’ve had time to internalize it.
Go Deep, Go Far
Insofar as a private tutoring relationship can allow a student and tutor to focus on specific topics, this format also provides a way for those topics to be more thoroughly excavated than would be reasonable in a group setting. Especially in the case of Singapore Math-inspired instruction, which favours deep, visual-centric intuition, taking a deliberate approach allows for more thorough and foundational exploration.
A private teacher can tune in to his or her student’s specific level of understanding and home in on their knowledge gaps. The teacher can clarify points of confusion and the student can ask as many questions as necessary until the information clicks. Moreover, a good tutor can bring the student to new levels of understanding by introducing more nuanced or advanced ways to look at the topic, guiding them through each step of understanding.
The flexible space that is provided by a private tutoring environment can facilitate a deeper understanding than would be made possible in a group setting. This depth is like depressing a metaphorical vault in order to launch the student further into possible applications of his or her mathematical understanding.
What About You?
It’s not difficult to see the advantage that private tutoring can provide. In the hands of a capable team of educators like those at Mentorhood, your goals for your child’s education can be explored and serviced. We are capable of coming alongside you, wherever your family may be along its educational journey.
Private coaching is for the superstar that wants to be at the top of their game. It’s for the struggling student who is looking for a more personal approach. And it’s for the regular learner who wants to make sure they have a good understanding before they move on to the next grade. In other words, private coaching is for you!
To find out how Mentorhood can support your goals, sign up for a FREE 30 minute private lesson, and let’s figure out where we’re going together.