Three Weapons in Teaching Private Lessons

When someone wants to fight, one must have enough weapons. With weapons that are owned and balanced with skill in processing weapons and careful recognition of enemies, it will be easier to win battles.

This is not much different when someone wants to teach private lessons. We all want the private lessons that are undertaken to provide benefits as we wish, can even provide more benefits, which we did not expect beforehand, or very profound benefits. Therefore, at least private tutors must know and understand what weapons they must possess so that private tutors can be useful:

a. Mastering in their fields

There is no doubt that, when someone wants to teach, he must master in what will be delivered. He must understand very well related to the material to be delivered. Mastering variations of questions is absolutely necessary so that we can be agile in combining complicated questions. In this sense it is not necessary that tutors must understand 100% of all material, but with teaching materials that we provide to students, we must master them properly. This is reasonable because if we do not master the material, students may ask questions about the material, or students ask for clarity, so if we are not able to explain properly, then students will look at us with negative views. Even worse, it will be a matter of storytelling among his friends and this has really happened.

Then what is the ideal measurement tool for measuring competence in teaching tutoring? I am of the opinion that it is sufficient for the national examination questions as standardization for graduation, we have mastered it well. This means, if we teach elementary school material, then we must be able to work on national elementary school exam questions. And so on until high school.

A self-esteem of course, when we can not answer the questions asked by our tutors. For example, from 10 homework questions from school given by our students, it would be very embarrassing if we could not do it. This does not apply if the questions are relatively complex.

In mastering the material, we should also need to know the prerequisite material. Because our curriculum includes a spiral curriculum. That what is learned now, the material can be constructed from preliminary knowledge or requires prerequisite material. For example, if a student is not able to factor quadratic equations, then we must know whether the student can operate algebra multiplication and addition.

Mastery of sufficient material makes it easy for us to create questions, simplify the completion steps, make it easier to deliver with a flow, which results in students understanding.

We often meet at school, for example, in one class there are 2 teachers for Chemistry subject, but from the 2 teachers, in the eyes of students there is something that is light to understand even though the material is heavy. Why is that? Because one of his teachers is more competent in his field. Likewise in such tutoring places, because sometimes there are students who study 1 subject with 2 teachers.

Although this does not exclude that everyone is competent, it will be more easily accepted. Therefore, the second or third weapon is needed.

b. Mastery of methods

The method of teaching in tutoring is indeed limited. At the tutoring course, of course, a teacher cannot bring props or conduct experiments as in school. The method here includes the mastery of concocting material and conveying, the more fluent in language acquisition, the vocabulary acceptable to students can vary which results in students becoming clearer with the teacher's explanation.

Included in mastering this method is the teacher's ability to package material that is difficult, but can be felt lightly by students, and this is very possible. A tutor feels he cannot do mathematics from middle school to high school class XI, it turns out that after tutoring teacher A in class XII, mathematics can be mastered well. Of course this is very encouraging and provides its own motivation for students.

When a tutor wants to want his students to remember a memory, sometimes the teacher develops with methods such as donkey bridges, or arrange with certain patterns, so students will easily remember. This is the selling point in tutoring.

It could be a tutor who only has a little knowledge about a particular material, but he is good at bringing, as if in the eyes of students, tutors have a very broad knowledge.

c. Understand who will be tested

To whom the tutoring material will be given, of course we must know the extent of the ability of the students. Tutor students from favorite schools will certainly have a different capacity in general from students from schools that are not seen by the public. Even in one school the ability of students can vary. Therefore a tutor must know at least the background of the tutoring student.

Including knowing who will be tested is to understand correctly the strengths and lack of cognitive abilities of children. There are students who are strong in memorizing but are weak in reasoning, some are quick to understand the material but easy to forget, there are slow in understanding but not quick to forget, there are good analytical skills but are lazy in taking notes, and so on. We can learn the strengths and weaknesses of these students from interviews with their parents or when learning takes place.

The higher the mastery of these weapons, the easier we will be able to deliver the material, so that the benefits for tutors can be felt as soon as possible.