A lot of you know me from the board here, and most of you know I work as a private tutor.
I see a lot of people talking about taking their child for intensive summer programs.
It occurred to me that I could offer an intensive summer one-to-one tutoring session:
I have the office in my house (well, will have when the workers finish putting the walls back in this week). I could show the parents how to continue working with their child after they go home, so there would be continuity and hopefully retention. I live in one of the most beautiful regions of the world, a tourist area anyway, and there would be lots of things for the families to do after the tutoring so they could combine this with a family holiday.
Problems I foresee:
People would have to take me on faith and pay me at least a reasonable amount in advance. In hourly tutoring I find that a lot of people lose momentum, when they find that work is involved and it isn’t all fun and games. What could I do about people who sign up and then cancel at the last minute, and those who start and then quit? How much non-refundable deposit? What sort of guarantees can I send people to know that I’m not fly-by-night either?
If I let people stay in a spare room on a B&B basis, when this is included with the tutoring work would that be too much intense contact and lead to too much friction? Especially since the second bathroom isn’t in yet.
Comments and suggestions welcome.
Re: proposal and request for thoughts
I’m talking about the summer, June, July, and August. If this worked out I could also do a Christmas vacation.
I live in Canada, in the province of Quebec, just moved into the handyman’s special in a suburb on an island just west of the city of Montreal. Incredible tourist area, urban and historical and sports and wilderness all within two hours, so people certainly could get a lot more out of it than just a tutoring session, which is important since more than the student have to come.
I’m trying to make tutoring more or less a full-time job now and can be really flexible about times.
One problem I do have is that people keep trying to get cut rates or free tutoring. The trouble is of course that I have to pay the mortgage and eat too. And if you give away your services for free people don’t value them.
The other problem I have is that people say they will do anything — and then back out when they see that “anything” might involve work, changing habits, etc. Often they run of chasing another miracle cure somewhere else. It is difficult when you make a contract and a schedule and then people don’t keep their side of the commitment.
Re: wonderful idea!!
as a parent, who did relocate out of state on not one but two occasions for intensive reading remediation - there was nothing available in my area - i think it is a wonderful idea.
what are your qualifications and what particular method(s) do you use? when you say extra work on the part of the parents and the students, what exactly does that mean?
as a parent i cannot work with my child(ren) in reading. i have tried all possibilities and it is just not the best situation. i fear people will think this is an excuse, but believe me i wound love to work with them and think i could be a good reading teacher for them. however, it has caused way too much family stress. kids with severe reading disabilities who have felt a lot of failure in that area, need their parents to be there for them on all the other levels more than the kids who don’t struggle with reading. it is a fact that we have lived in my household with a severely dyslexic 12 year old and now a mildly dyslexic 1st grader.
i will add i have been trained in lindamood bell - hoping to teach my sons - have studied phonographix - hoping to teach my sons - and have read about and researched many other reading programs for dyslexics. i could implement an incredible program for my little one, but it would end up backfiring and not me nearly as effective as going to someone else. i think kids who struggle with reading need someone else to teach them this skill; they need a cheerleader and a friend; and to bring their new found, hard earned skills back to show mom and dad.
if you are doing an intensive (i will assume that means 3-4 hours or more per day/5 days per week) it is too much to expect the parents and the child to go back to their hotel or wherever they are temporaily staying and work some more on reading. as a parent i would not want to do this. yes, i would go home and support it the best i could. also it would be helpful to have some outside support (maybe network with tutors who use the same methods as you in the city where the kid lives) so that when the child goes home he/she can have additional tutoring for maintance and continued growth in reading.
i will repeat, this is strictly a parents opinion. and no, living in your house during this time might be too much….
Re: wonderful idea!!
Thanks.
My qualifications: BSc, BA languages/linguistics, BA Honour Math, MA Education, teaching certificates from two provinces; eight years plus in schools and twenty years as a private tutor.
Methods and materials: tried-and true methods following the same logic as Orton-Gillingham: strong phonics using a highly structured program following a sequence of consonants, short vowels, digraphs, long vowels with silent e, blends and word families, other vowel pairs, syllables, and overlap of code; multisensory approach using writing in a formal patterned way to develop kineshthetic knowledge of letters and spelling and order; spelling included in this process. Reading connected text from the beginning using a very tried and true series of readers based on frequency of words in English with exceptionally high repetition factors and with longer, complex sentences. Later reading (after about 1.8) from literary basals with massed reading of connected text with planned developmental vocabulary. Constant interrelation of reading vocabulary, phonics, pronunciation/phonetics and handwriting.
Similar teaching available in French language with new excellent phonics-based series from France.
I was thinking of two or three possible plans: one week at two hours a day, rest of the day for holiday — this would be enough for a “booster” session but would need a lot further backup later at home; one week with two two-hour sessions a day with a beach break in between — this would be fairly intensive; two weeks at two hours a day, fairly intensive; and two weeks with two two-hour sessions a day, definitely intensive. When I work with kids we both really work. Intensive school-year sessions tire them out after one hour. Two hour-sessions are the maximum that do much good.
When I was talking about parent work, I was thinking of having the parent share at least some of the session time and learn the approach, because half the job is in using appropriate materials and half is in the approach. Then I was thinking that parents could go home with materials and either continue the work themselves or train a tutor to continue. No matter what, the work will be retained a lot better if it is continued at least two or three times weekly.
Don’t worry about not being able to work with your child — my own darling daughter decided around age 7 that she had had quite enough of mommy teaching her and that was final. She preferred to repeat calculus 1 and 2 rather than have her mother the professional calculus tutor help. Perfectly normal. That’s why we have schools and why I get to work as a tutor :-)
I like the idea and I think it would appeal to some. Where do you live? And what months are you talking about? There’s many people who would do anything to get their child to read.
Michelle