TutorTime+ Explained
One of the most often asked questions I get from prospective parents and students is “What is TutorTime+?” I created a separate page for it but it appears that it leads to even more questions. I’ll take the time to explain it in more detail here.
What?
TutorTime+ is my daily connection with students. I will ask them questions and they will respond. This happens individually with every student I interact with or, for those in a small group tutoring course, I’ll set up a group chat.
It will generally be on WhatsApp but I’m flexible to what platform we use. Currently, I’m using Discord with one of my students. As long as I can access the app from my mobile phone, as well as a desktop, we can make it work.
They types of questions will be ones that students need to improve on. For example, if a student is struggling with Trigonometry, I’ll push those questions to him/her. And, of course, every day will be different than the previous day. Some days I may throw only a couple math concept questions his/her way. Other days I may throw a dozen quick grammar questions.
What stays the same is that I am always thinking about what each student needs to do to improve his/her score. If you’re looking for a tutor, whether it’s me or not, one of the most underrated aspects is to make sure you find one that cares. It’s not enough to really understand the material. Your’e paying a lot of money. Find one that will give you the individual attention you need to score really high.
Why?
You’re here to get a really high score on the exam. That requires Mastery. Mastery requires retention and retention requires repetition. So how do I do it? I’ll use an example of a former student.
Lilly was really struggling with complex numbers. So, over the course of a 3-month course with her, I asked her complex number questions on seven different days. First every few days, then spaced out. By the time her exam date came around, she was a master at complex number problems.
Mastery requires retention. Retention requires repetition.
How do you know what questions to ask and when?
Let me start by explaining spaced repetition. Let’s say you want to memorize the capital of Morocco is Rabat. If you are learning this for the first time today, science tells us that you will forget it after 24 hours if you never see or repeat this again. Alternatively, if you repeat it within 24 hours, you’ll remember it for a longer period of time (perhaps 3 days). If, after a couple more days, you repeat this again, you’ll remember it for perhaps a week. And so on and so forth. Of course, the numbers aren’t exact (24 hours, 3 days, one week) but the idea is that if you spaced out your repetition, you’ll retain it for long periods of time.
So that answers “when”. The “what'“ here happens because I meticulously track every student’s weaknesses. Once I meet with a student a few times I begin to understand their areas of weakness and what we need to work on. From there, we work at it!
Cost
No, there is no additional cost for this. This is included in every course - whether it’s the individual or small—group course. Yes, it requires a lot of time for the back-and-forth interaction. So the hours I actually spend with each student far exceeds the listed hours on the pricing page.
But I view it as very important. I am passionate about helping students achieve a high score on this exam. And I cannot simply meet up with them and tell them to go study on their own. It’s simply not how I would prepare my own daughter and, thus, not how I would prepare any student.