Ideas to get a summer tutoring practice?

Des, have you thought of leaving business cards at speech pathologists,or doctor offices? You might even get the local schools to refer you, my previous tutor had one teacher that referred her kids that weren’t doing well to her.

Or, maybe, doing some kind of presentation about reading at the library or something, to make soem contacts? Are there homeschoolers in the area?

Parents really often don’t know where to get names, having been in that situation myself. I’d consider sending a letter of introduction to all principals and special education teachers in your area. Parents often contact them looking for help. Think about volunteering to speak at private schools for PTA or equivalent. I am suggesting private schools because you don’t run into the same step on the toes that you might in public. You could talk about normal reading development, how to make your kid into a reader, and red flags of problems that may require attention.

Also, look for other services in your area that target kids such as slt, OT and leave cards there.

Beth

I agree- send’em around to principals, sped ed, reading specialists. I was at a loss to know where to find a tutor and it was the district reading coordinator was able to steer me to someone who really knew their stuff.

Hi Deb, Where are you from?? I suggest you setup a website with your location and any special training that you have (OG, LMB, etc), so that anyone in your area who does a goggle search for a tutor in your area would find your name. I am a parent and have not had success finding an experienced OG tutor near my house. Everything is word of mouth or calling local universities. I think schools might be reluctant to suggest using any specific person. I would also post an short ad in the summer camps magazine in your area.

Albuquerque NM.
Too bad I’m so far away but that is quite a commute. :-) And summer is no time to visit to do an intensive thing.

You have a good idea. It sounds easy enough and I have something like 100 megs of space. I’ll have to see if my computer has a program for doing a website. I had an old one, but I doubt it will work on my new OS.

—des

Try putting an ad in the newspaper….I am sure you will get tons of responses, with so many parents being unable or unwilling to help their children. You may not even have time for vacation!!! :) God Bless!!!

Well last year I put an ad in a local weekly, it was continuously running, every other week or something. During the year, I got responses but by summer people I lost a lot of clients. It happened that I lost pretty much all (except one client over the summer). One other was interested but kind of had a hard time getting in (due to own schedule).

BTW, I wouldn’t put down anybody that can’t work with their own child. I think it is prob. the majority. My own mother was a teacher (of course back then they didn’t know anything about ld) but she couldn’t tutor me at all, I would just get oversensitive and start crying if she made any corrections. I don’t think my response was entirely atypical. So I don’t think it is all the parents choice. Some kids are just not ameniable to working with parents.

—des