A MINUTE WITH... REBECCA HARRISON

Rebecca is currently in her final year of the Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Creative and Professional Writing. She is Deputy Campus Manager at Altona Meadows, and she teaches Junior and Senior English at Lore Tuition.

Growing up I never had formal tutoring, but I did have a support system for my learning that allowed me to do well at school. I was lucky enough to have a Dad that would sit with me every night after school and was knowledgeable enough to help with the areas of my Maths and Science that I needed extra help with. If my Dad was at some point unable to help, my parents always gave me the option of getting a tutor to help me. 

When I felt I was a little more confident in my own skills, I volunteered as a peer-tutor at my school to help younger students that may not have had the same access to tutoring as I did. 

It was these early experiences that showed me how important and valuable it is to have someone who is exclusively there to make sure you understand all concepts of a topic. Tutoring is not about a student being stupid or unable to do the work. In a classroom setting, a school teacher doesn’t necessarily have the time to give individual attention to all their students. 

This is where tutoring outside of school can help. It allows a student to ask for help with topics that they may not have quite gotten in class. Their learning can be individualised and structured to suit a student’s particular learning style. Tutoring is about building on knowledge learnt in the classroom and ensuring that a student is comfortable with that concept so they are then more confident in being able to use these in test conditions and later life.