Teaching vs. Tutoring

You may wonder whether there is any difference at all between teaching and tutoring. Believe me, there is. Teaching is a lot more free than tutoring. You see, when you give tutoring, you usually focus on the things your student did at school. His textbooks and his teacher determine what you do with him in the tutoring lessons. When you teach, however, you are the one determining what you do, and how you teach it.

Both jobs have their rewards. If you give tutoring lessons and your student looks at you at the end of a lesson to tell you, 'I wish my teacher could explain as well as you do', well, that's definitely a keeper. Or if a student manages to get his first passing mark in a test because he actually learnt something from you which his teacher couldn't teach him. A teacher on the other hand is the one guiding and encouraging his students to learn. He is (or should be) the one to show his students the wonders of books, of science, or numbers.

Both jobs have their drawbacks. Many children who need tutoring don't want to spend their free time with a tutor and their most hated subject. The tutor doesn't have the power to give marks (and to punish destructive behaviour during tutoring lessons that way). The teacher, though, needs to give marks whether he likes it or not. He has to make decisions (and to defend those decisions against parents' arguments every now and then). If a student feels discriminated, the teacher will become the target of parent attacks and complaints. Some teachers are even badly bullied by their students.

Maybe only one of the two jobs is for you, or none; they are quite different although they are both about the same goal: Help others to increase their knowledge. I like both.