When is the Best Time to End Tutoring?

When we moved from Virginia to Colorado, we had to drive ourselves and our cats halfway across the country. I had been warned about driving through Kansas, but didn’t believe it until I experienced it myself. From Topeka to Denver, there is nothing. Just fields, giant wind turbines, and 500+ miles of flat land. It’s a good 8 hours of monotony. I kept thinking, “When will this end? Wait, does it end?”

And sometimes we think that about other experiences as well. Such as tutoring. (Like my segue?)

Your child starts working with a tutor and it’s a little awkward in the beginning. But, things slowly start to improve. The tutor teaches Taylor new concepts or helps reinforce what is taught in class. His organization or time management gets better. He feels like a champ. You start to wonder, “Does my child need a tutor anymore?”

Let’s dive into when and how to end tutoring, if at all!

When is the Best Time to End Tutoring?

While this might look a little different in each home, here are some common signs that tutoring might be ready to end:

Your child reaches those tutoring goals
His grades are up and staying up
She doesn’t have as much work to do with the tutor
He feels confident working without the tutor (and the grades back up that confidence)

That doesn’t mean that you want to end tutoring right away, though. When you end tutoring can depend on a few factors.

Why did you start tutoring?

If you started working with a tutor because of a grade in a single class, then you will probably end tutoring when that class is over. Many of my students come for help with AP courses – when school ends, so does tutoring. This would also be true for SAT or ACT tutoring as well.

You might search out a tutor, though, for your child’s larger issues, such as organization or study skills. That type of tutoring tends to last longer without such a clear cut ending.

Or your child has a learning difficulty or disability. You don’t grow out of a learning disability. As your child ages and school’s rigor increases, she must learn new strategies to be successful. This usually means long-term tutoring.

You believe that students should work with a tutor to improve a variety of skills and/ or stay ahead of their peers. This philosophy is especially common among Asian families. For example, in Japan and South Korea, students usually attend tutoring for several hours a DAY after school. When these families come to the US, they want to continue that kind of on-going tutoring.

How Do We End Tutoring?

Start by talking to your child’s tutor. Hopefully, you set tutoring goals when you started working together. If you think it might be time to end (or adjust) tutoring, sit down and review those initial goals with the tutor.

If those tutoring goals have been met, it’s probably time to end the relationship! You can just quit cold turkey or phase it out. If you’re meeting every week, start meeting every other week. Are you still comfortable? Are your child’s grades still good? If so, keep phasing it out.

You may also decide to change the focus of tutoring. Sometimes, students come for study skills and then decide they need help with English. So, our tutoring changes its focus.

The end of the semester is always an easy time to end the relationship. The tutor can help wrap up the grading period and then ride off into the sunset, so to speak. 🏇 Sometimes, I stayed on for the first few weeks of the next semester, just to make sure my student had all her new systems in place.