I think it’s paranoid and unnecessary. My kids have received tutoring and no one ever made sure they could be seen.
The harm done is that if it done, and more people think it is expected that children will be tutored in full view, then anyone who just tutors kids in a room will be questioned. What’s up with that pervert who tutors the kid in a classroom?
I hope you don’t and I hope it never becomes the standard.
I think I may have given y’all a serious misapprehension about how I do things.
The kids I tutor for money never come my house. (The kids of friends & family may come to my house, like the aforementioned 11-year-old kid, but then they’ve all been alone with me anyway.) If it’s a teenage girl, I require that we be in one of the several study rooms at the central library, because it’s impossible to be hidden there; two of the four walls are actually big glass windows. Nowhere to hide. This is somewhat inconvenient, as the rooms can’t be reserved; to make sure I can get one, I have to be there when the library opens and get into it for a 2-hour session. If it’s a teenage boy, I’ll say, “Yeah, that’s too much trouble. We’ll do it in your kitchen.”
The potential problem arises if you’re alone with this kid in his kitchen, though.
Honestly - it’s your call, of course. And it does sound like getting a suitable public space at the library is a pain. But I think the important point is that, even though it’s unlikely, all it takes is one malicious or confused kid, one time, to put you in a very uncomfortable situation. If you want to take that risk, that’s not crazy - it is, after all, very unlikely that an accusation would be made. Just so long as you know that there is a way to reduce that risk to zero - and most people who spend serious amounts of time with kids not their own would probably choose to eliminate that risk entirely.
Is there a Starbucks near you? A public park? Anything that would be easier use than the library study rooms, but still public?
Oh, Starbucks never works. Too loud. And I don’t mean to imply that I tutor the boys in their own kitchens. The library’s always the first option; it’s just harder to arrange if the kid’s not available first thing on Saturday morning or first thing Sunday afternoon. But if a kid gives me a ton of grief about when the tutoring can be done, I’m likely to say screw it anyway.
Not paranoid at all.
Sad state of affairs huh when it comes down to this. I remember one time I was looking for an appartment I called one place the lady told me to come by at such a date. I showed up and her daughter of about 7 yrs old answered the door. She was home alone from school until her mother showed up I couldn’t believe it. She would of let me in to see the appartment, but my alarm bells went off right away and said no thanks I’ll come back when your mother is here and left stat .
With something like this it’s hard to be too paranoid. Make sure you are visible, and ideally have a woman nearby and watching you.
Personally, as a man I’d never go into any field involving children. I don’t talk to them, I don’t look at them; I certainly wouldn’t ever dare be alone with one.
I didn’t know guys were this paranoid about this stuff. I guess I’m not surprised about it. Though I remember being tutored in high school (early 00s) and I’d had male tutors at my house. Usually my mom was somewhere in the house but I don’t know if she always was. In any case, they never expressed discomfort–it never occurred to me that that was skeevy.
I love kids. Love being around them, love listening to their silly stories, love teaching them stuff. There are few things more joyful than the silliness of little children. What you wrote makes me feels sad.
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I didn’t know guys were this paranoid about this stuff. I guess I’m not surprised about it. Though I remember being tutored in high school (early 00s) and I’d had male tutors at my house.
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Last time I was in a female tutee’s house (not counting my nieces and such) was in high school: it was a girl I was tutoring for the ACT. But, of course, we were classmates, and it was 1986 or so.
AMEN—And at least with the kids I was working with (high school students who had been expelled from one of the mainstream public schools) most had criminal records and were very savvy about legal issues and possible ways they could fuck with adults if they so chose to…
I once overheard two young women talking about one of thier friends who didn’t like her mom’s new boyfriend, and what she might say the boyfriend had tried to do to her to get rid of him. (I just kept on walking)
That might be relevant if I weren’t, by the very nature of the enterprise, picking and choosing who I’ll deal with. If I don’t want to tutor a kid, I don’t, and I needn’t explain why to anyone.
I didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing what students I interacted with—Whatever you decide, I hope it goes well and you can help some kids who are actually interested in learning. (which is something that happened fairly infrequently over the 6 years that I was teaching)
I hope I didn’t come off as arrogant before. I just meant that, just as a private school has more leeway in deciding who to deal with than a public school (and thus comparisons between the performance rates of the two are rarely apt), a private tutor, doing it as a sideline, has even more.
Another vote for “not paranoid enough.”
If the kid’s kitchen is an option, have the rule that the parent is in the room with the two of you. But you need to avoid the appearance of impropriety for the boys & girls alike.
In a perfect world, it shouldn’t feel skeevy. What you’re doing is perfectly reasonable. The trouble is the screwballs who take an innocent situation and make it skeevy.
Not at all—I meant what I said—it is INCREDIBLY rewarding to help a struggling student who really wants to learn and who is appreciative of help.
Good Luck!!!
Not only will treating the boys and girls with the same degree of caution spare you potential trouble down the line, I imagine trouble could arise from anyone knowing you were treating them different in the first place (‘Why does he hide away with the boys and not the girls? What’s he afraid of happening with the girls? Or what’s he doing with the boys?’). If you’re going to be understandably paranoid, go full-force!
Oh by the way, I forgot to mention: being paranoid not only protects your reputation from false accusations, it also protects you if the student is the one trying to make advances.
In my specialty, it’s quite common for students to become attracted to teachers, to get crushes on them, and even to actively chase them. Those that can’t resist can’t stay in this profession.
When I meet new teachers, the best advice I can give them is: Keep your pants on.
Just because you handpick them doesn’t mean they can’t accuse you or that others can’t suspect you. You can’t really predict what kid might do something.
I was tutored by four men when I was in high school. I met with the guy who helped me with physics in the granny flat under the house. My mum and I specifically chose that place because it was quiet and no-one would be walking through and interrupting. My chemistry tutor met all his students in his home office behind a closed door (again, so that it’d be quiet). The man who helped me prepare for my maths exam met me in his dining room, with his wife and kids occasionally walking through. My violin teacher ran lessons in his living room. His mother was usually in the house and sometimes other students would be there if they’d arrived early or my lesson ran late, but I was usually alone with him. Neither I, my parents or the tutors ever had a problem with any of these arrangements. That makes me feel kind of naive after reading this thread, but mainly just glad that I live in a context where it isn’t such a problem.
Reading accounts from guys in this thread makes me very grateful that, as an eighteen year old female, no-one is suspicious of my intentions in volunteering with kids. I don’t try to be alone with any of them, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid it either. In the situations I can recall where I’ve been alone with kids (playing with babies in one room while the bigger kids did an activity in the next, helping a girl with a sprained ankle get to the shower block, helping another to make her bed, going on the paddleboats with one at an excursion to an amusement park and taking girls from the dormitory to the toilets at night while on camp) it would have been a massive PITA to have to find another adult to chaperone. The point of having more than one person there was so that we could share responsibilities. It’s sad that we live in a world where this sort of thing isn’t OK for so many people.
I didn’t vote in the poll because I’m not familiar with Skald’s social context and have no idea what is or isn’t an appropriate level of caution for him.
I probably would’ve thought this ten years ago, but now, unfortunately, and it is very unfortunate that we should be in this cultural climate, I accept the need for this careful arrangement.
There was never anything like this kind of care when I was growing up, but I have heard rumours of the behaviour of one of my school teachers (that I’ve been unable to confirm) which, if true, would not have occurred if we had been afforded more diligent care.