When meeting with your tutor, you’ll want some indication of progress. Ask her to draft a letter/email every two to four weeks for you. I like email because it is a paper trail and easily forwarded to teachers for review. Try to stay away from verbal updates. In the written review she should cover:

1. Your child’s attentiveness and willingness to learn. (Behavior during sessions.)

2. Any difficulties your child has had with grade-level class work or with the specific teacher. You might learn some interesting things about the student/teacher relationship to bring up in a parent/teacher conference.

3. Your child’s progress over the last few weeks, based on the tutor’s established benchmarks. And an overview of what they worked on each session.

4. The tutor’s proposed next steps. This is your chance to respond and perhaps make suggestions or redirect the sessions anyway you see fit.

If you find the tutor editing your child’s writing, be wary. Identifying problems and helping the student correct them is one thing. Editing writing is a problem. It should be your child’s work. Also, just because your tutor makes changes it doesn’t mean the teacher will agree. Let changes come from the writer, guided by a tutor or you, whoever is helping the student at that time.