Questions to Ask a Chemistry Coach Before Hiring Them

Hiring a tutor sight unseen is a strange thing to ask a parent to do. You’re handing someone an hour a week with your student, usually over a screen, and you’re supposed to just trust it’ll work out.

You don’t have to. A short conversation before you commit to anything tells you almost everything you need to know. Here’s what I’d actually ask, if I were on your side of the table.

Start with the level, not the subject

“Do you tutor chemistry” isn’t specific enough. Ask: Have you taught this exact course — AP Chemistry, Gen Chem 1, Organic — not just taken it once in college. There’s a real difference between someone who remembers the material and someone who has watched dozens of students get stuck on the same concepts and knows why.

Ask what curriculum or exam they’re most familiar with. If your student is in AP Chemistry, you want someone who knows the actual FRQ rubrics, not just general chemistry knowledge.

Ask how they’d handle the first session

This is the question that tells you the most. A tutor who says “I’ll go over whatever chapter you’re on” is planning to re-teach the textbook. A tutor who says “I want to see where the understanding actually breaks down first” is planning to diagnose the real problem.

Those are two completely different services, and only one of them fixes anything long-term.

If a tutor can’t tell you how they’d spend the first session, they don’t have a plan — they have a calendar slot.

Ask what “done” looks like

A good tutor should be able to describe what progress looks like in specific terms: fewer careless errors, being able to explain a concept out loud without notes, a target score range. If the answer is vague (“we’ll just keep working on it”), the engagement doesn’t have a shape, and open-ended tutoring tends to become open-ended billing.

Ask what happens if it’s not a fit

Not every tutor is right for every student, and a tutor who’s confident in their work will say so plainly instead of getting defensive. You want someone who’s more interested in whether they’re actually helping than in keeping the booking.

The easiest way to get all of this in one conversation

You don’t need to email five different tutors a list of questions. A free 20-minute Chemistry Check-In is built to answer exactly these questions in one sitting — what’s actually going on with your student, whether I’m the right fit, and what a realistic plan looks like if we move forward. No pressure to book anything after.

If you want the shorter version to bring into that call, I put together a Parent Tutor Checklist that covers these same questions plus a few signs that tutoring is genuinely the right call before you even get on a call with anyone.

Adrianne Penullar, M.S., M.Ed.

AP Chemistry teacher with 10+ years in the classroom, college adjunct professor, and EdD candidate (graduating 2027). I’ve tutored AP Chemistry students through every kind of struggle — and I know exactly where the exam catches students off guard.