The teacher’s role is to gradually make themselves unnecessary.

A math teacher doesn’t do the student’s homework for them and call it a day because that’s useless. The student has not learnt anything. The teacher teaches the student how to do math, how to think like someone who’s good at math. The student at that moment perhaps might only want their homework to be done, but the teacher knows that the best way to support their long term growth is to impart the tools of learning and reasoning, not transcribing and memorising.

The teacher should be able to lay down a path to the student and say, If you follow down this road you will surpass me someday, and do so in a way where the student truly believes it is possible and is excited by it.

My most satisfying moments as a tutor are when I reach the end of a teaching block and look at the student I have been working with and realise that they have become powerful, independent learners, and that I finally have nothing left to teach them. Then I know my job is complete.