Tell me about being a tutor.
What did you like/dislike?
What did you tutor in?
Did you need any kind of special qualifications?
How did you get students?
I used to tutor part time at the end of High School and during my Freshman year. I actually worked for an SAT preparation program, so all of my students came through them.
My focus was on the Verbal section, which was good because I felt comfortable with the subject matter. The main qualification that I had was my Verbal SAT score.
The most difficult part of tutoring is finding ways to make a subject easily accessible to numerous students with varying strengths and needs. As frustrating as it can be for the tutor when the student does not quickly grasp a concept, it is that much more challenging for the student. Trial and error was a surprisingly effective method in determining the most useful techniques.
My favorite part of tutoring was watching students succeed and excel.
What subject are you planning on tutoring in?
I tutor through a program set up by my university so its not a problem getting students.
I tutor General Chemistry and College Algebra.
I dislike the fact that i’m a senior in college and I tutor mostly freshmen who try to use me to basically do their math homework for them. They also complain how its all TOO hard and they are not really willing to work at it. Most people are getting tutors because of pressure from parents to do better. Not because they actually WANT extra help. But thats not always the case.
I did maths coaching/tutoring as a part-time job when I was at uni.
I found it easy money, although the repetitiveness of it all was fairly boring: going over the same concepts week after week with students.
I had no formal qualifications. I had only just finished school. But I had been a very good maths student and the teachers at my old school recommended me to the current students. I also got students through family friends and through the local parish church.
I tutoured for the LSATs and SATs.
I liked interacting with the kids. What I didn’t like is that I was dealing with really, really wealthy children who expected me to fairy-dust the “right” answers into their head. Almost ALL of them were really smart. What they all happened to be was incredibly lazy. I don’t say this with some sort of class bias, incidentally. I was exactly the same way when I was their age, and I came from the same type of social background (in fact, I tutoured some of my friends’ younger siblings). They were kids, who for the most part, had scored above a 1350 but not high enough in the 1400s to feel comfortable about whatever school they were aching to get into (or for LSATs, a lot of kids in the 159-161 range). They were already kinda at the peak but not willing to put in the effort to really push themselves for the extra 30/4-5 points or whathaveyou.
The nice part was hearing back from some of them after they got into college and telling me that I had helped them out, even if it was just 20 points :).
For the most part, the whole “I’m going to sit here dumbly and mutter that I didn’t do the assigned homework and then wonder why my scores aren’t going up” attitude got to me. Also, I got into law school far away.
I used to tutour through a well-known test prep company as well as doing it as a favour for my parents’ friends children.
I don’t think I would ever do it again. I’m just not cut out to deal with intellectual slackers.
**Tell me about being a tutor.
What did you like/dislike?**
One plus of both places I have tutored is sometimes you get paid to do your own homework, when you staff walk-in tutoring.
I actually enjoy tutoring, especially when I help someone understand the material. I also find it helps me get a much better understanding of the material for myself, especially if I am tutoring students who are learning from different textbooks and professors.
What did you tutor in?
I have tutored in Spanish, English, research methods, and economics.
Did you need any kind of special qualifications?
A or B grades from the courses I tutor were the minimum qualifications. In general I found to get the job it helps to have really strong qualifications in one or 2 subjects. Then, once you are on board, it is easy to add any course where you have earned an A (or possibly a B).
How did you get students?
I worked for university tutoring centers. This is nice because they do the marketing for you. They also often pay for walk-in hours and for initial and ongoing training. The hourly rate is probably a bit lower than what I could get on my own. Actually, some of the English tutoring was by referral to family friends, and I did get paid a bit more that way.
I did it for years at a university. The tutoring center is available to paying students, so I didn’t have to go looking for them. I liked being able to hang out there, eat, and study when I wasn’t working.
The pay was not too great. However, the experience really helped me prepare for teaching later.
I tutored in English, which meant I wound up editing papers from absolutely every subject, major, project, you name it.
I liked the flexible hours.
What did you like/dislike? I enjoyed it, I made my own hours, about 15 hours a week, I had fun tutoring people and I learned from doing it. I disliked working for minimum wage.
What did you tutor in? I tutored Math in the Brookdale Community College Math Lab.
Did you need any kind of special qualifications? I was a Calculus Student.
How did you get students? I sat in the Lab and helped out whoever needed help. This was when I was only 18 and I was great at math, I lost much of my skill later on. But I was able to help students that were in classes more advance than mine by getting them to explain the problem to me. By simply talking it out, we would both learn a new part of Calculus. I really enjoyed helping the Trig and Algebra students where I was on sure footing.
Jim
What did you like/dislike?
My first year, I had a couple of entry-level students. One was trying really hard but just didn’t have a lot of language aptitude - but I could respect that she was trying hard. The other one could have been really good bust just didn’t give a damn, and that was very frustrating. Sadly, she was studying speech therapy, and Spanish could actually have been quite useful for her.
The second year was more fun. I really liked the fact that my students were all there because they wanted to be - they were all MBA students who were studying Spanish purely because they wanted to. I disliked that it was mostly a small-group tutoring session, and it was hard to come up with material that was the right level for all 4 participants. (My one solo tutoring client was easier to work with for that reason.) Also, you could never tell who was actually going to do the homework; they all said they wanted homework to practice, but in reality they were super-busy with their regular coursework and din’t have much spare time for that sort of thing.
Another plus: the town where I went to grad school had a crappy economy for part-time jobs because of the oversupply of hypereducated people. Part-time tutoring was by far the best-paying and most flexible gig I was going to get. You know it’s bad when you apply for a part-time job with no benefits, and they want you to have at least 2 foreign languages and computer skills, they are paying $6/hour, and they have 100 applicants for one slot.
What did you tutor in?
Intermediate/advanced conversational Spanish.
Did you need any kind of special qualifications?
I had a degree with honors in Spanish and a few years as a court interpreter under my belt.
How did you get students?
I just walked down to the Spanish department and put myself on their tutoring list - so many undergrads have to take Spanish as part of their language requirement, and so many of them have a hard time passing second-year Spanish that they will try anything.
What did you like/dislike?
I loved it–my favorite job I’ve had (I was a college writing tutor). First, my dislikes: the pay, the sometimes interminable downtime while I waited for students.
But what I loved: students who came in and really cared about their work. Getting to study grammar as my job. Trying to find ways to explain abstract concepts to people such that they’d understand them. Persuading people that my persuasive writing techniques would be effective (e.g., teaching them that, while the passive voice is not verboten, there are specific reasons why good writers use it sparingly, and teaching them those reasons). The sexual tension with the lovely women who would come in week after week for tutoring sessions. Learning about academic subjects I’d never considered. Giving myself huge, but hugely satisfying, headaches as I read papers, tried to identify one or two major areas where I should work with the students, and helped them understand those areas.
God, it was great.
Did you need any kind of special qualifications?
Basically, I interviewed with the college’s writing center coordinator, a professor there. I brought him a sample of my writing and talked with him about my interest in the subject; from there, I was golden.
How did you get students?
Sometimes their professors required them to come in. Honestly, I didn’t like those students much. They weren’t motivated (“extrinsically motivated,” in teacherspeak), they resented having to be there, and they would do the minimum work necessary for me to let them go.
Other times, students came of their own accord. I’d done the same thing when I first started college, and I’d had a tutor tell me that my writing was great and he had no suggestions. That pissed me off; therefore, no matter how exquisite the writing that came to me, I always worked with it, read it critically, until I found an area in which there might be room for improvement. When the writing was great, I certainly let the student know, and I’d tell them that I was offering my response just as an intelligent reader and that if they ignored my ideas the piece would still be lovely; but I’d work my ass off to find areas in which the writing could be strengthened, in my opinion.
That led to a lot of repeat customers, which was tremendously satisfying.
I also found a tutor at the writing center who did the same for me: he liked my writing a lot, but he’d struggle with it and always point out some area where I could tighten up the wording, elaborate on a point, or improve the structure. It was great.
Daniel
What did you like/dislike?
Dealing with the bloody parents who were convinced their children were misunderstood geniuses. Or the ones who saw me as a glorified babysitter.
What did you tutor in?
ESL, mostly to elementary school kids. Sometimes adults.
Did you need any kind of special qualifications?
If the parents were insistent, I showed them my student ID so they could see I was telling the truth about what university I was attending. That was it.
How did you get students?
Connections. Aunt’s friend of a friend and that sort of thing. I’ve found it’s easier to get students once you’ve started and the parents tell their friends about you.
Tutoring was the easiest way to make money in college - what other job pays over $25 an hour? That was basically why I did it. I did have the odd student that made it worth my while, but most of my experience was with rich brats that made me dread the possibility of ever having kids of my own. (I suppose I should mention that all this was in Seoul, so YMMV.)
When I was an electrical engineering undergrad, I worked as a tutor for the math department: they were teaching pre-college algebra in a workshop setting, and used one teacher and two tutors per class. The teacher would lecture for an hour, and tutors would work with the students on homework for an hour and grade their tests.
After being approached by former tutorees, I later did private tutoring on an individual basis in college algebra and calculus. This was often more challenging, because people tend to seek tutoring only when they start having trouble. But they were generally more motivated, so it could also be more enjoyable.
Because of my job with the department, I didn’t have to work too hard to get students – it was mostly by word of mouth. But I occasionally put up ads on bulletin boards, and always had plenty of responses. The demand picked up during finals and mid-terms, which sometimes made scheduling tough.
One no-brainer rule I adopted from the beginning: I never did private tutoring for any current workshop students of mine. I didn’t want anyone expecting slack with the grading of their test (or hints about what would be on it) because they’d paid me for my time.
Regarding qualifications, I had no degree yet, and I wasn’t even a math major, but one thing that really helped me was that I had been very poor at math all through school, and only learned math when I decided to study engineering. Having struggled myself, I had an easier time explaining things to people who were struggling: lots of lifelong math whizzes can’t explain stuff that’s always been obvious to them.
:eek: Sweet Jesus–if tutoring had paid half that it would’ve been more than double what I ever made at the job, and I never would have left. For me it was definitely a job I kept because I loved it, not because it paid anything like what I could get at other jobs (say, as a legal transcriptionist, the other main job I had during college).
Daniel
I have done three kinds of tutoring:
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some acquaintance needs help with chemistry (I’ve done this in Spain, no cost). It’s a one-day deal; usually the problem isn’t so much in the chemistry as in understanding what is it that the teacher wants to hear; so far all these people weren’t chemistry students, but people who had chemistry as part of some other major, and the teacher wasn’t a chemist so he/she often didn’t understand the subject. I ask the students to bring the book and classnotes, and give them a little quiz which tells me what is it the teacher needs to hear. I’ve helped several people go from F to A in 3 hours!
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Tutoring people in an “academia” in Spain. This is a tutoring school, where you may get anything from computer courses to english to what I taught: “anything that’s Sciences”. Most of my students were people around 20 who were trying to become firemen or policemen. Kind of sad seeing someone who’s 20, a HS graduate and can’t add fractions. It didn’t really pay enough to live on, but it was uhm, tax-free cash compatible with my regular job.
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Tutoring in “any kind of Chemistry” as part of my TA assignments in graduate school. The immense majority of students didn’t so much have a problem with chemistry as with basic algebra. They didn’t know how to manipulate equations
-a +3c =13 can become -a +3c -13 =0
was apparently beyond their vocabulary. Recognizing as a variable any letter other then x? No way! “But but but the variable is X! There isn’t any X in here!”
And of course they couldn’t read and didn’t know how to turn the “words” in the problem into “equations to be solved” (logical, since they had problems with the whole concept of equation).
It paid for my first 15 months of graduate school. I’m still wondering how much of the problem was in the teachers, how much in the school system (I was extremely surprised to see the math I’d had in Spanish 4th grade show up as a Honors Class for High School in the US), how much was the students. An American friend of mine got a BS in electronics engineering without a single credit of Calculus - to me that’s just an alien state of mind.
What did you tutor in?
I tutored first year law students in Constitutional Law during law school, in a lecture hall format.
What did you like/dislike?
I liked seeing the “light bulb” go off, the knowledge that someone you tutor didn’t understand the concept when they walked in the room, but did when they walked out. I liked getting paid, too. I can’t think of much I didn’t like.
Did you need any kind of special qualifications?
You just needed to be chosen by the professor whose section you’d be tutoring. Generally the professor chose a student who previously made the highest grade in the class.
How did you get students?
FEAR!! 
First year law students at my school are/were filled with enough fear and anxiety to fill an average size mental ward. Having the help of a student who’d done well in the class is powerful mojo.
I tutored computer programming classes when I was in college. It was a great gig because I could earn money without having to go anywhere, and keeping up with the students kept me sharp. It also led to a part-time teaching job later. It was a subject I really enjoyed, and the only people taking those classes were people who wanted to learn, so I wasn’t dealing with surly students who were forced into tutoring.
I wasn’t thrilled with the pay (about double minimum wage). The hours were a good thing (I could take off when I pleased) and a bad thing (sometimes I went for days or weeks without a student).
The qualifications were that I had good grades in my major and I knew my subject.
I got students by direct recommendation from the staff (“I think you need a little extra help, John. Give InvisibleWombat a call and he’ll walk you through this.”)
Did anyone else read that as “Who has done torturing for a living?”
Tell me about being a tutor.
It’s either extremely rewarding or extremely frustrating. After a while, I was just happy to get students who seemed to be trying. OTOH, it was a pretty easy job and I had plenty of time to study or read when there weren’t students.
What did you like/dislike?
Dislikes: Every girl ever came in, sat down, and said the same thing “I can’t do math.” :rolleyes: Well, with that attitude, no wonder you can’t do it. Actually, the older the female was, the less likely she was to think she couldn’t do it. The college-aged ones were the worst. It was like a trained response with them. “Numbers? Oh, I’m a girl. Can’t do it.” The older ones knew that with some work they’d be able to figure it all out eventually. (Not that they were always right about it, but they tried.)
I also disliked the people that came in expecting me to teach them entire chapters 20 minutes before they had a test, people that didn’t bring their books (I’m not talking about a one time “I forgot my book” thing. I mean the “Why do I need a book? Can’t you make up problems?” people.), and the “Can’t that cute guy over there tutor me instead?” girl. (The girl that asked me that actually refused to work with anyone one but him. She’d just sit there and stare at him if another tutor tried to help her. :rolleyes: )
Oh, and the guy that came in all out of breath and recited a question to me and wanted the answer right then. (As if I didn’t know he’d taken a “bathroom” break during his test. He’d even told me an hour before he was going to have a test then. :smack: )
Likes: The first time a student came back in just to tell me she’d gotten a B on her test. She was so happy about it. 
The guy that I tutored for a couple semesters who got so good at math, he wanted to (and may now actually) be a tutor too. People telling me I really helped their improve their confidence about it. (This is a major thing. They have to believe that they can do something in order to actually be able to do it.) Also, and this is a guilty pleasure that I know I should feel awful about, it’s fun to make fun of the students who do particularly dumb things.
What did you tutor in?
Math, everything from recognizing numbers and counting up to calculus and differential equations.
Did you need any kind of special qualifications?
I just had to show the boss my college transcript. (It had three math classes, Calc 2, Vector Calc, and Diff Eq, all with a grade of B or better.)
How did you get students?
I worked at the community college in the academic center. They came in when they needed us. Or when their teachers told them they’d get exra credit for getting tutored. :rolleyes: