How We Train Our Maths Tutors
As you’ll probably know from my TikTok, I believe great teaching starts with energy.
What I demand and instill in every one of our maths tutors is that Breakthrough Maths has its own philosophy when it comes to teaching maths. It has to. If traditional classroom teaching was working for every child, they wouldn’t need our support in the first place. That’s why our approach has to be different.
Our job isn’t simply to explain maths. Our job is to engage students, build their confidence and get them actively involved in learning. Once a student is engaged, they’re far more willing to participate, ask questions and challenge themselves.
At Breakthrough Maths, we train our maths tutors to create lessons that are energetic, engaging and impossible to ignore. Because when students enjoy the lesson, the learning follows.
The Greatest Showman
Huge fan of Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman, and I often tell my maths tutors that this is the goal.
When you’re teaching a class, you’re the ringmaster. For that hour, it’s your job to hold the room, create energy and keep students engaged from minute one right through to minute fifty-five.
A great maths lesson should be full of enthusiasm, passion and excitement. Students should feel involved. They should want to answer questions, take part and challenge themselves.
Too often, maths is presented as something dry and difficult. We take the opposite approach.
You have to create a show around maths. You have to capture attention first. Once students are engaged, the learning follows naturally.
That’s the philosophy behind how we train maths tutors at Breakthrough Maths. Our job isn’t simply to explain maths. Our job is to inspire confidence, create engagement and get students actively learning.
When students enjoy the lesson, they’re far more likely to participate, ask questions and make progress. That’s when the real breakthroughs happen.
Summer Training Program
Every summer, I take our team of maths tutors—both new and experienced—and put them through two weeks of intensive training.
I personally lead this training because it sits at the heart of everything we do at Breakthrough Maths. During those two weeks, we focus on teaching.
• how the dynamics of classes should run
• how to keep every child on their toes in the class
• how to ensure that nervous kids aren’t singled out (Read my blog on Maths Anxiety here)
• how to read a room, feel a room, and make sure that the room is actively listening and engaging
My goal is simple: I want every tutor starting our free Back-to-School Course in August performing at 100%.
In many ways, it’s a teaching boot camp. Every summer, we revisit the Breakthrough Maths philosophy, refine our approach and make sure every tutor understands exactly what is expected in a Breakthrough Maths class.
That investment in training has paid off enormously over the years. It has helped us create a level of consistency across our classes.
Versus Other Grind Schools
I think the first thing to say is that Breakthrough Maths is a programme for learning maths. It’s not traditional maths grinds.
Students attend four live classes every week, at the same time, with the same tutor, every Monday to Thursday. That means students receive up to 16 lessons every month as part of their membership. The result is more consistency, more accountability and, ultimately, more progress.
Once a student joins Breakthrough Maths, they’re there to learn, engage and improve week after week. That’s very different from dropping into the occasional grind when an exam is approaching.
Compared to one-to-one grinds, our model is different again. One-to-one tuition absolutely has its place, and for some students it can work very well. Students often feel comfortable asking questions and receiving individual support.
However, one of the mistakes I see in one-to-one tuition is that the tutor can sometimes end up doing too much of the thinking. I’ve made that mistake myself in the past. The student understands the solution in the moment, but they haven’t necessarily done enough of the work themselves.
At Breakthrough Maths, we build lessons around active participation. Students are constantly thinking, answering questions and engaging with the lesson.
• There’s consistency
• There’s accountability
• There’s a testing in every class
the biggest difference is our approach to testing.
Over the last five years, we’ve invested hundreds of thousands of euros into building technology that integrates live testing directly into our classes. Every lesson includes opportunities for students to answer questions, receive instant feedback and measure their understanding in real time.
The impact has been enormous.
Students can immediately see how they’re performing. They’re more engaged, more focused and more accountable for their learning. Rather than sitting passively through a lesson, they’re actively involved from start to finish.
One student summed it up perfectly when they told me: “It’s impossible not to be engaged.”
When I heard that, I knew we were on the right track.
Read my article on why I started Breakthrough Maths here.
Where This Goes
I always want the Breakthrough Maths method and philosophy of teaching to be present in every class we deliver. One thing I’ve always believed is that a boring tutor is a bad tutor. Students don’t remember every example you show them or every question they answer. What they do remember is how a teacher made them feel.
Were they engaged? Were they interested? Did they enjoy the lesson? Did they leave feeling more confident than when they arrived?
For me, great teaching starts with engagement.
It starts with making students feel welcome. It starts with energy, positivity and enthusiasm. It starts with a tutor who can connect with a room and create an environment where students feel comfortable participating and having a go.
The maths comes afterwards.
The testing, the consistency, the repetition and the practice are all hugely important. But before any of that can happen, students need to be engaged and willing to learn.
That’s why personality has always been such a big part of the Breakthrough Maths philosophy. We want our tutors to bring energy to every lesson, create an enjoyable learning environment and help students build confidence from the moment they join the class.
I genuinely believe that’s what makes Breakthrough Maths different, and ultimately, that’s what makes our classes so special.
