The good news is that most tutors overcome their initial fears and anxieties about tutoring. Knowing what to expect, and knowing that most of your fellow tutors have felt the same concerns, may alleviate your anxieties. Tutoring is not easy; it will constantly confront you with your own weaknesses and failings. This can be difficult for anyone. For one who has just committed to helping others, it can be devastating. But because almost every tutor experience these feelings, almost every successful tutor has had to overcome them.

Will the students like me?

Many new tutors are concerned with whether or not their assigned student will like them. Will the tutee accept them as a friend and a role model? As a white female tutor reflects on her experience, she expresses a general concern of many tutors: “Although I do like children, I do not know that I am very approachable, for some reason. Maybe it is because I do not have much contact with children in my daily activities, I suppose I am not quite used to being around them nor know how to treat them or at least do not have much experience in doing so.”

Like this tutor, many worry that they will not be compatible either with children in general or with their specifically assigned tutee. Besides worrying about how kids will react to their personalities, tutors also worry about how tutees will see them, what first impressions they may have. Tutors are often afraid that they will not look like the type of person the tutee will want to work with.

Most tutors wake up on the morning of their first day of tutoring anxious over what to wear, how to comb their hair, and how they look overall. Our male tutor writes, “Maybe I would be looked up to as a big-brother, or maybe because of my six-foot three-inch stature they would be afraid of me.”

Will I like my students?

Tangential to the previous concern is whether or not you will like the students to whom you have been assigned. What if a child is obnoxious or completely unmotivated? What if a tutee doesn’t want to be there or deliberately asks things that you can’t answer and makes tutoring difficult for you?

Whenever you are assigned to spend a lot of time with someone whom you dont’ know, it’s natural to wonder if you’ll get along. And obviously, if you’ve been assigned to help them, it’s normal to wonder if you’ll really want to once you get to know them.

Will I be able to fit in with and understand kids who are different?

In tutoring, differences  between tutors and tutees are a very big concern, especially because tutors and tutees often come from very different backgrounds. It is to many tutors’ credit that they are concerned with and interested in working through these differences, but their enormity may scare some tutors away. Is it possible for an upper-middle-class white university student or business executive to form a close relationship with a young African American student from the inner city? Can a female tutor from a sheltered background ever hope to relate to a street-tough gang member? It’s easy to wonder. And since people often interact with a rather homogeneous group of people in their everyday lives, the idea of tutoring “other” types of people is often intimidating.

Even tutors who are confident that they can form a relationship with a student from a different background sometimes worry that they won’t be an appropriate role model for someone who may have to face radically different life experiences than they themselves have ever known. This occurred to one white female student at a nonprofit community outreach program in Los Angeles that works to empower minority children (mostly African Americans, with some Latino students).

At the beginning it was very difficult I had many fears and wondered how I could possibly make an impact on anyone’s life. I kept questioning why these minority children would look up to an upper-middle-class white person who is almost their own age. In addition, I also questioned how I would fit into the environment and become involved in the things the children and the program are taking part in. What do I know about the South Central community anyway? I mean, I am an outsider here. How do I become an insider, and am I even supposed to?

Will I be able to teach the students?

In addition to wondering if forming a relationship is possible, many tutors worry about their teaching competence. In fact, even when tutors find that they are immediately accepted and put at ease by the students they have been assigned to tutor, the issue of how well they will teach still lingers, as in the following example. This female tutor was welcomed into the fourth-grade classroom to which she was assigned, yet she was still nervous about being an effective teacher.

A perceptive boy named Roger from the front of the room yelled out, “Hey, are you one of the tutors from UCLA?” When I confirmed Roger’s question with a nod, smiles spread throughout the room. Two girls seated near my shyly asked, “Can we work with you today?” This was my first experience in the classroom, and it felt wonderful. I was really nervous because I felt the children looked up to me and expected me to know all of the answers, since I was a big college student. I was also nervous because I was afraid that the children wouldn’t be interested in working, but only talking. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to focus their attention or motivate them to learn.

Maybe you’ve never taught before. Maybe you’re shaky in a couple of subjects. Tutoring tends to exacerbate insecurities about a tutor’s own academic performance. Many tutors find themselves driving to their tutoring site trying to figure out how they will tell a student that they have never been good in math themselves.

Many factors may contribute to tutors’ evaluations of their own ability. Often their personal expectations when they become tutors lead them to self-doubt and force them to question their teaching abilities and techniques.