A stranger will sit beside your child, inside your home, several times a week. Choosing that person deserves more rigour than a phone number from a WhatsApp group.
This is the checklist we apply internally before any mentor joins our Wall of Stars — use it even if you never work with us.
Before you meet anyone
1. Verify identity, not just impressions. Government ID, current address, and a reference you can actually call. A genuine teacher will respect you more for asking.
2. Match qualification to the class, not the ego. A B.Sc student can be brilliant for Class 6 science; Class 12 physics deserves a subject specialist. The question isn’t “how qualified?” but “qualified for this?”
3. Ask about their current students. Which classes, which boards, which schools? A tutor teaching three CBSE Class 10 students right now knows this year’s pattern, not a decade-old memory of it.
The demo class is the real interview
Never hire without one full teaching session. In the demo, ignore charm — watch for these:
- Do they assess before teaching? A real mentor spends the first twenty minutes finding out what your child actually knows. Someone who launches straight into Chapter 1 is delivering a script, not teaching a child.
- Can they explain one concept three different ways? Ask them to. The second and third explanation is where teachers separate from toppers-who-tutor.
- Who talks more? If the tutor speaks 90% of the hour, your child has attended a private lecture, not a class. Mentors make children work.
- Watch your child at minute 40. Leaning in, attempting, asking? Or nodding politely, waiting for it to end? Children vote honestly with their posture.
Red flags that end the conversation
- Guarantees. “95% pakka” is a sales line, not a teaching plan.
- No interest in school syllabus, test copies or last year’s report card.
- Fee vagueness, or pressure to pay months in advance.
- Rescheduling chaos in the very first week — it never improves.
- Discomfort with your presence nearby during classes. You should be able to overhear any session, always.
Questions that reveal a mentor
- “Where do you think my child will struggle in the next three months?” (Real teachers predict; tutors react.)
- “How will I know it’s working before the next exam?” (Listen for specifics: weekly updates, test copies reviewed, a visible plan.)
- “What will you do if your explanation doesn’t work?” (The honest answer involves changing method, not blaming the child.)
What ongoing quality looks like
The first month tells you everything: a lesson log after each session, homework that gets checked line by line — what we call red-line feedback — and an early honest flag when something isn’t working. If you’re getting silence and “sab theek hai”, you’ve hired a visitor, not a mentor.
We built our whole verification process around this checklist — identity, qualifications, teaching demo, mentorship philosophy — so that by the time a mentor reaches your door, the vetting is already done. See how the match works; the demo class is free either way.