If you’re trying to improve your grades you’ve probably at least thought about getting a tutor.

When Sheepdog Sciences started working to improve education, I started tutoring high schoolers in math, science, and SAT test prep to understand how learning happens in homes. I was shocked about how different the studying/learning experience was in different families.

If you want to save money and really take advantage of the tutor’s expertise here are the lessons that quickly became obvious to me.

1) Interview the tutor to make sure it is a good fit and describe what you’re looking for help. Good conversation involves discussing the outcomes expected, type of instruction, and permission the tutor has for assigning work and holding the student accountable.

2) Have the tutor leave notes about lessons learned during the session. Be sure to review these with your kids. With some students, I even would call back for a five minute discussion a couple days after the session for a brief refresher of what we covered that week.

3) Especially for the SAT, Math, and Science; break the session up into concepts or forumlae that need to memorized and concepts that need to be understood. Memorization can happen without the tutor being there and is the necessary precursor to often understanding the material. Even if it is just reciting an equation and you don’t undersatnd what it means, memorize it before the session. When the tutor is there it will make the time considerably more efficient. Please refer to this material, even if briefly, a couple times in the following week.

A lot of these tips are really just ways to improve the practice of study. (We call it study hygiene at SDS.) There has been a lot of research to understand this and how the brain learns. For example, at the core of learning is forming long-term memories from short-term memories (what you studied that day). It is well known that sleep is the period of time most relevant for long-term memory formation. During sleep, the brain works on deciding which events from the day it is advantageous for it to remember. Hopefully it decides that you should remember the content of this blog post, but maybe not the typos it contained.

In fact, there is good research that shows that people preferentially remember more in areas that correlate with their long-term goals! How the brain chooses which moments are worth remembering for a long time and which aren’t is something that is very relevant for us at Sheepdog Sciences.