The Weekly Check-In: How Mentor Plans the Week

Every week starts with a short check-in. Mentor — the first tutor your child meets in any session — asks how the week is looking, reads their energy as green, amber or red, and plans the week's learning around it. A busy week gets shorter, gentler sessions; a normal week gets the full push; an overloaded week gets rest. Mentor is your family's energy keeper, and the honest job of an energy keeper is sometimes to say "not this week." It's the difference between a tutor that knows about the football match on Wednesday and one that books a hard session for Wednesday night regardless.

Pro athletes don't train at the same intensity every day — they periodise around matches, travel and recovery. A KS3 child with school, homework, sport and music has exactly the same problem and rarely anyone helping them manage the load. The weekly check-in is that help.

What Mentor is doing in the check-in

The conversation is deliberately short. It isn't a form or a mood diary; it's a quick read that sets the tone for the week. It usually goes something like this:

Mentor: "How's the week looking?" Your child: "Football Monday and Wednesday, and there's a science test Friday." Mentor: "Busy one. Let's call it amber — shorter sessions, lots of review, nothing brand new until things ease up. Sound right?"

From that, Mentor sets a weekly energy state, and every session that week reads it before it begins. There's usually a lighter re-check at the start of each session too — because a Tuesday can feel very different from the Sunday when the week was planned.

This is the same green/amber/red idea we explain in full in energy-aware tutoring explained; the weekly check-in is where it actually gets set.

The three states, in plain terms

Nothing here is a punishment or a reward. Amber isn't your child "failing" to be green. It's just an honest description of the week they're in, and a promise that the tutoring will fit it rather than fight it.

Why "rest is valid" is a feature, not a loophole

This is the part that surprises parents, so it's worth being clear.

When the honest answer is red, Mentor will say so — and will suggest rest rather than run a full session. That can feel counterintuitive from something you're paying for. But a tutoring session on a wrung-out brain wastes most of its value: tired minds don't consolidate new material, they just build a quiet association between the subject and feeling rubbish. Skipping a session in a genuinely overloaded week protects both the sleep and the child's relationship with the subject.

Two guardrails keep this from becoming an excuse:

• Rest is logged honestly. A rest week is recorded as rest — not hidden, not dressed up as a lesson that didn't happen. You can see it.
• The pattern is what matters. One rest evening is nothing. But if a child sits in amber or red for more than a couple of weeks, something needs adjusting — maybe a dropped activity, maybe more sleep, maybe a proper conversation. The system surfaces that pattern for you without nagging your child in the moment.

This is the same philosophy we take with a child who'd rather chat than study, and with over-scheduled teens generally. If the weekly picture is consistently red, that's often the early edge of burnout — which we cover in preventing burnout in busy teens.

Where you come in as a parent

The check-in is your child's, but you're not shut out of it.

1. You can override the state. If your child says green but you know it's been a rough week — a bad cold, a family upheaval, a run of late nights — you can set amber or red yourself from the dashboard. Your read is the backstop to theirs.
2. You can see the week's plan. The energy state shows up as a pill on each child's card in your family dashboard, so a glance tells you what kind of week it's been.
3. You can watch for the two-week signal. A single amber week is ordinary. A month of them is worth a chat — usually about sleep, schedule or stress rather than about study itself.

How the check-in fits the bigger plan

The weekly check-in handles this week. It sits underneath a longer view: at the start of a term, you and your child set a term focus — the one thing to prioritise over the coming months. The weekly check-in then delivers that focus at a pace the week can actually bear. The term says where; the check-in says how hard, right now.

That layering matters. Without the weekly read, a term goal becomes a stick to beat a tired child with. With it, the goal bends around real life — busy weeks, rest weeks, exam weeks — and still gets there. It's also part of why AI tutoring stays a modest, bounded amount of screen time rather than an ever-present grind, as we set out in how much screen time AI tutoring really is.

FAQ

What is the weekly check-in with Mentor?

A short conversation at the start of the week where Mentor reads your child's energy — green, amber or red — and plans the week's tutoring around it. It sets the tone so sessions match a real week, rather than pushing the same load into every slot.

What do green, amber and red mean?

Green is a normal week with good energy — full sessions and challenges are fine. Amber is a busy or tired week — shorter sessions, core topics only. Red is an overloaded week — homework help at most, and often the honest answer is rest. Mentor adapts to whichever it is.

Won't "rest is valid" just let my child dodge work?

Rest is logged honestly, not hidden — so a genuine recovery week is respected, and a pattern of opting out shows up for you to see. One rest evening is nothing; a fortnight of amber or red is a conversation worth having. The system surfaces the pattern without nagging your child in the moment.

Related reading

• What Is Energy-Aware Tutoring? The GREEN/AMBER/RED System Explained
• Preventing Burnout in Busy Teens
• Setting a Term Focus With Your Child

Duke Harewood built aitutors.me for his own KS3-aged daughter, whose packed week was exactly the thing that made a rigid, same-every-time tutoring slot fail. The weekly check-in is the fix that made it stick. Updated 09 July 2026.