In the world of tutoring, we often obsess over metrics: marks on a practice paper, the number of vocabulary words memorised, or the speed at which a student solves a quadratic equation. However, the most profound moments in a session rarely involve a grade. Instead, they are the moments of realisation after a mistake when the student pieces it all together.
True learning isn’t a linear climb; it’s a series of plateaus followed by sudden leaps in understanding. As tutors, we are often tempted to bridge that gap for the student by providing the answer. But if we give the solution up so quickly, we rob them of the cognitive struggle required to own the knowledge.

A successful session is less about being an encyclopedia and more about being a scaffold. When a student is stuck on a maths question, the goal isn’t to tell them the answer straight away. The goal is to backtrack, and ask heaps of questions to guide them through their difficulties to then be able to answer the rest of the question by themselves. When a student finally connects the dots themselves, their brain undergoes a visible shift. Their posture changes, their eyes brighten, and suddenly, the “impossible” task becomes a puzzle they’ve solved. This builds academic resilience.
To foster these moments, we must as tutors embrace the “Comfortable Silence.” Giving a student ten extra seconds to process a prompt can be the difference between them relying on us and them relying on themselves. Our value isn’t in how much we know, but in how effectively we guide a student to realise how much they are capable of knowing.

Nicole Stamatelatos