Become a tutor

I called my potential student and told her that I can’t tutor her after all because I’m planning on moving.

There are a few things I need to sort out first, like where I will be living this winter. Once I get that sorted, I’ll look for more tutoring clients.

On a positive note, when I called a school principal yesterday about subbing, I mentioned that I was tutoring a bit now. She said that a couple years ago a few teachers started a tutoring service there and it was quite successful. She spoke entirely in the past tense, so I suspect that those teachers have moved on by now.

I have a few ideas on how to expand the customer base up there too, by hopefully getting funding from external sources (local foundations, etc.) to tutor kids from low income families.

So I’m supposed to phone the student I’d be tutoring to set up a time for tomorrow, but I haven’t decided on whether to move or not.

If I do move, I feel pretty confident that my job prospects will improve. My tutoring opportunities might improve too. However, it is all still up in the air…

What to do. I feel like a jerk because I met this student ad I’d really like to work with her, but a) I don’t feel very confident about the subject (Math 12), b) 2 hours a week is not really worth sticking around for.

I feel flakey though, and I haven’t even started tutoring her yet. I think I will feel better if I just tell her I can’t do it after all. That way she could find a long term tutor.

but it’s only 2 hours a week.

I need to get some stuff figured out quickly, because if I take this tutoring job it will actually require quite a bit of prep work (haven’t taken the actual Math 12 course, I did Math 11 and then 3 first year college math courses, which cover the same stuff, and more, but I’ll still have to brush up a lot.

I met the student last week, and she’s a great kid.

from time to time, but I want to do more. Since no schools seem to be hiring, and I have zero income, I probably need to set up a business. A teacher I know said that if you start a business and only make a little money, you can sometimes get a tax refund for some of your business expenses. I guess as a private tutor who visits students homes, that might include part of my car insurance and fuel costs (?). It’s worth looking into.

So far I have been volunteer tutoring in an after-school program for at-risk youth. It’s only one day a week, and I really like the kids. I also made an online tutoring ad. I set it up 2 weeks ago and yesterday I got my first response.

I had said my training and experience was with kids between grades 7-10, but this woman asked me to tutor her daughter who is in grade 12 math. Apparently her highest math grade during high school was 56%... and she wants to go to university. Wow, that’s going to take a LOT of work.

I don’t know if I’m up for this! I actually never took math 12. I took math 11, and then 10 years later I took pre-calculus at university (and kicked butt, surprisingly!) and got between A and A- on three subsequent math/statistics classes. It wasn’t easy though.

But I’ll meet the mother and daughter this afternoon to discuss it. Perhaps they WANT someone who doesn’t already know-it-all, but does know that math is not impossible, and it’s just a matter of time and effort. I think I’d need to see her at least twice a week… maybe three times. But that would get expensive for mom.