Your parent probably sent you this. That's fine. Read it or don't.

You understand it in class and blank on tests. Or the homework takes you twice as long as everyone claims it takes them. Or you've quietly stopped trying because trying and failing feels worse than not trying.

We do math for an hour. Real problems, probably whatever's currently going wrong. I watch how you work. At the end I tell you — you, not just your parents — what I think is actually happening. Sometimes the answer is that you don't need a tutor, and I say that too.

Name the two things students actually dread about tutoring — that it's school after school, and that it's an hour of someone watching you be bad at something. Say plainly that the sessions target the actual problem (which means they end), and that being wrong in the room is the entire point of the room.

"If any of this sounded like you, tell your parent which part. That's it. It makes the first hour work better, because I'll know where to look.