By: William Mattison

I’ve spent the last 10 years in the classroom working with big groups, small groups, and individuals at every level from 6th grade to adults in continued education. I always say that every classroom of 20 represents the entire mosaic of personality types and learning styles. Maybe that’s true, maybe not, but it sure felt like it. I ain’t no scientist; I’m an English teacher. 

Either way, that was something I enjoyed immensely. But it also presented a challenge of how to best serve each individual. Tough to boil down a decade’s worth of tips and strategies, and apply them to GOAT specifically, but I hope that these tips are helpful in creating great experiences for you and your students.

Also, I hope they’re not toooooo obvious. I always hated sitting in trainings, being talked to like I didn’t know what the *&% I was doing!

A Little Prep Goes a Long Way

You’re a GOAT because your years of experience and academic vigor equip you to quickly make decisions as to how to best address student needs and act on your strategies within the time frame. Ahead of a session, you know the subject, level, and possibly information from a message that the student has sent you.

That can be enough to enter the subject ready to hit the ground running. You also might find it helpful to throw out a quick intro message ahead of the session.

Pro-tip: this can be a copy / paste message that you alter slightly for each new student. The idea is to make that first minute an appeal to your credibility and ability to quickly dispel whatever stress led to the booking in the first place! And it doesn’t take much! 

Encouragement Builds Confidence: Confidence Yields Results

Studies show that positive reactions to effort are much more valuable than positive reactions to results. Find every opportunity to voice encouragement toward effort. Simply put, people of all ages perform better when they feel good about themselves and the work at hand. Frustration and stress might bring people to our door, and that puts us in such a special position! 

Manage the Time

So much can be accomplished in even a 30 minute time frame! Give yourself a few minutes to do a proper diagnosis of the student’s needs without the need to hurry. Inquire about learning styles as well!

Throw some bullet points into the chat as well to guide the session; I’d recommend ordering the list meaningfully, rather than, for example, following a study guide that might be arbitrarily sectioned. What’s likely to happen is that time will start to run out with items left on the list. If this is the case, the student does have the option to extend the session (if you have additional availability). If they’re unable to stick around, you can offer them a quick plan of how to address the final items. Which leads to… 

When’s Next?

Try (easier said than done, I know!) to leave a couple of minutes for an overall check-in with the student. Narrate what you were able to accomplish during the session; it’s likely more than they realize! This would be a good opportunity to see if they want to schedule a next session. They can easily find you on the platform, but you can also message them your booking link. Also, let them know that we’d appreciate a Google Review at this link. If they mention you by name, we’ll respond to that review with your individual booking link!

Small Groups Work (and Pay!)

One of the founding principles behind GOAT is the power of small groups. Just hearing other people talk through similar problems and topics is so effective at making concepts click.

You never know who it’s going to be who articulates it in a way that gets the lightbulb turned on. You can always ask a student if they have friends from class who might want to jump on the next session. If they like the idea, then they can just share the next session link with their friend(s).

Each additional student saves everybody an additional 10%, and you make more for facilitating! 

Feel free to comment anything I might be missing, and I’ll add it in! Let’s call this a living breathing document!