Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with tutoring

Playing good mentor/bad mentor

Admiral Haddock — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:56:49 -0800

Tutoring a 14 year old. How to be supportive of dreams and yet practical? I'm tutoring a fantastic 14 year old as part of a program focused on getting inner-city kids into good high schools (and from there, on to college). My student is very interested in acting, and wants to apply to an arts-oriented high school and then go to college and get into the movie business and be a famous actor. Hooray!

I've never seen him act--I take on faith that he's good, but I know he's got a great personality and is very funny and bright. But acting is a tough row to hoe, and I'd like to make sure that he keeps his options open.

We haven't talked at all about how hard it can be to make a living as an actor. Is this something we should do? He's very interested in school--but primarily, it seems, as a means to getting to be an actor--and I don't want to stifle that enthusiasm. The tutoring program is really geared towards nuts and bolts (and we don't have much time with the kids), so I don't have a lot of visibility into the rest of his life, though I do know that few people in his family finished high school.

Any advice?

Bonus question: he's asked me to pull together some materials on colleges that have good programs in film/theatre. I was thinking USC and NYU, but this is not my area. What should he have on his radar?

Help me become a good LSAT tutor.

paradoxflow — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:58:41 -0800

I recently applied for a position as a pro-bono LSAT tutor, unfortunately I wrote my LSAT three years ago and I have no tutoring experience. Help? About the only thing I have going for me is that I scored in the 97th percentile. Honestly, I remember very little of the test, most of it just came naturally to me, and the strategies that I applied to the analytical reasoning section are long forgotten.

How can I prepare so that I can help this person as much as possible, besides once again familiarizing myself with the test? What advice do you have for helping someone do better on the LSAT, with a focus on increasing overall speed, and strategies for the analytical reasoning section? What about being effective as a tutor in general?

I have access to limited resources, so I'd appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction in that regard as well.

Thanks.

Online directories or other helpful resources for aspiring private tutor?

shrimpsmalls — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:04:28 -0800

Online directories or other helpful resources for aspiring private tutor? I would like to supplement my current part time job with some private tutoring gigs. I love working with students of all ages and have a good deal of experience with children as well as adolescents in various educational settings. While I currently work at a school in an afterschool program (which has led to some babysitting gigs), I am looking for some reputable online directories that would connect me with clients. Sites like Wheresmytutor.com are what I have in mind, but I'd like to know more before agreeing to any registration fees. Do any members have personal experience with this site or related ones, any recommendations, insights into the world of tutoring?

If it helps, I would prefer to tutor students in English language comprehension and grammar or history. (I have an M.A. in the humanities, which has provided me with solid writing skills). I would also be comfortable with math at the elementary level, but its not my personal strength. I am also in Chicago.

Tutoring Location

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:04:48 -0800

Where is a good place to tutor a high school student that is not the student's house? Or is a student's house a fine enough place? I would like to meet in a library or quiet cafe but a) I don't know the area very well, b) I've called the libraries in the area and they don't have "study rooms" and otherwise don't seem to be all that conducive to studying. Typically I'd have the student come to our study center, but she lives more than an hour away and so we are meeting closer to her house. Tutoring in the student's house is a possibility, but I don't want it to be a distracting atmosphere, not to mention I'd like to work in a public space because of the older male tutor/young female tutoree dynamic. Obviously if I tutor at the house, I would do it in a common area (not bedroom) where the parents are in seeing/hearing distance. Also, this is going to be one of my first tutoring sessions and I'm a bit apprehensive having the parents around the entire time. Perhaps I'm worrying for nothing.

Tutors: where have you found the best tutoring locations? Should I try to find a cafe? Should I just do it in the middle of the library? Should I not worry about doing it at home? Thanks for your help and advice.

ESL Textbook Recommendations

sdis — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:22:37 -0800

ESL Textbook Recommendations, anyone? I'm starting to teach English to some private students and to a few classes. With my private student, I'm going through my teaching resources relatively quickly, and I'm going to need some new resources relatively soon. I'm in the states for a couple of weeks and figure that this is a good opportunity to buy a textbook or two and use it to help build lesson plans.

My lessons have currently been broken up as follows, which has turned out very nicely so far:
A. 10 minutes: Review of previous lesson
B. 20 minutes: Lesson on English in some new context: How to talk about locations of objects, how to do introductions, how to talk about your family, etc. Currently using http://humanities.byu.edu/elc/Teacher/sectiontwo/sectionII.html lessons
C. 10 minutes: Accent elimination work, etc (My private student is Korean)
D. 20 minutes: Grammar lesson: working on some verb tense

I need good source material primarily for topic B. Any ideas or recommendations?

Help me help the children

mandymanwasregistered — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:31:40 -0800

Help me be a more effective tutor for smart but focus-challenged kids in the 8-12 year old range. I've recently started volunteering as an after school tutor at my local branch of 826. The way it works is kids drop in after school and are supposed to work on any homework they have and then can move on to other activities.

My experience so far has largely been with kids who understand the material covered in their homework, but lack the ability to remain focused long enough to get it done. This, of course, causes them to spend 2 hours on assignments that should ideally take no more than 30 minutes.

At times I am at a loss for how to respond to their challenges when encouragement doesn't cut it and I get flat out demands to do their homework for them. I really don't want to let the dynamic fall into antagonism.

I guess I'm looking for both general suggestions on how to keep the interactions positive as well as more specific suggestions on how to deal with the challenges of reading comprehension. For example, what to do with the kid who can run through his/her addition/subtraction exercise without problem, but stumbles over anything involving word problems?

Fun activities for ~5 y.o. ESL kids: Writing and Speaking

sdis — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:52:51 -0800

More Kindergarden/ESL questions: Fun activities with writing and teaching to kids with limited english capabilities You guys were great with the last question (Here), so I figured I'd try two more at once!

1. My same kid (5 y.o. Korean girl, speaks English very well) has been helped tremendously by the Florida Center for Reading Research textbooks online, and now I'm looking for a bit of help with writing. She finds it terribly boring, and I need to help her fix up her handwriting somehow regardless. If I start her up on writing a letter correctly (she has her own sort of messy script) it turns into a 10 minute battle that leaves us both exhausted for the rest of the hour, and I haven't really accomplished much of anything to show for it. How can I trick her into thinking that writing is fun?

2. I have 2 new korean students tomorrow for the first time, ages 4 and 6. Their mother says that their English is a little shaky, and I would love some advice on activities to do with ESL kids who aren't quite on firm ground when it comes to speaking English. (My first student is prettymuch as fluent as any 5 year old American, so I've gotten to focus exclusively on reading and writing)

Calculus Tutor in the Houston area? Specifically Northwest Houston.

isoman2kx — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:01:49 -0800

Does anyone know a tutor in the Northwest Houston area for Calculus and (bonus points) for Physics? I've come to the realization that I might need a tutor for when I have questions in Calculus. Since my dad passed away last March, I don't have anyone to instantaneously ask for Calculus help. Looking up things on the internet for hours is too slow and me staring at it for hours is also too slow. I use cramster and it helps, but even on cramster, I don't feel they do the job of explaining it in detail like "I" would want it. There are tutors about 20 mins away from me or so at my campus that I used to go to, but I'd ideally like just one on one tutoring at a house or something with a whiteboard/blackboard and all that good stuff.

Does anyone in the Houston area know a good, yet cost-effective tutor in the northwest area? I don't like the fact that I'd have to pay for a tutor regardless, but since my dad isn't here anymore... it's become increasing difficult as I advance up the Calculus ladder and now I'm in Calculus II. I live fairly close to where 290 and 610 meet. So inside the west part of the 610 loop is cool or up to like Highway 6 and 290 is cool too.

Bonus points if the tutor does University Physics I (cal-based) as well :)

Thanks for any suggestions you guys can give...

-Travis

Fun activities to teach reading to a kid!

sdis — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:39:43 -0800

Tutoring advice for young kids (5 y.o.): Keeping it fun, learning to read I'm currently tutoring a 5 year old Korean girl in English, basically preparing her for 1st grade when she moves back to the US. She's smart, and has attended Pre-K in the States for a year and has good spoken English.

She knows her letters, though she has plenty to learn about good handwriting and getting a little more coordinated with her hands.

The only thing she needs to catch up a bit in is reading; she can recognize the names of the letters, and tell me the sounds they should make if I quiz her, but putting those sounds together into words is taking more concentration than she's willing to give, and trying to push it (or trying to work on handwriting for more than a few minutes, for that matter) gets her very bored very quickly.

What fun activities can I do with her that will trick her into learning to make the transition from reading individual letters to reading words?

(While you're at it, name some fun kindergarten activities I can do with her in any subject; the more I have in my back pocket, the better!)

Volunteer writing tutoring in MN?

sciapod — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:34:50 -0800

Are there any organizations like 826michigan in Minnesota? I would like to volunteer to tutor for kids or adults, preferably by helping out with writing/composition or English skills. I know 826 doesn't have a Minnesota branch, but does anyone know of anything similar in Minnesota (preferably in Minneapolis or the surrounding suburbs)?

Need a crash course in tutoring

Admiral Haddock — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:59:17 -0800

Next week, I begin as a volunteer writing composition tutor for an 8th grader (whom I have not yet met). I have various training materials from the organization sponsoring the program, but do you have any advice for me? This will be my first time volunteering as a tutor.

How do I start tutoring for reals?

Precision — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:33:58 -0800

How do I, a soon-to-be high school senior, go about tutoring math as a part-time job? I've been working a retail position (cashier at Target) for the past 18 months. Since I turned 16, or shortly after. Throughout my junior year I pulled 20-25 hours a week, topping 30 most of November/December, and working 37+ immediately prior to Christmas. I get a halfway-decent hourly rate, $7.70. Decent for a part-time high school job.

Now, however, I want to quit. Why? No reason, really. Most of my friends in school all graduated this year (I've been roughly a yeah ahead of my grade since freshman year. So I've taken nearly all my classes with the year ahead of me. I'm only taking 4 classes this year as a result.) and I feel the need to make some close(r) friends in my year. Thirty hour weeks cashiering is not how to do this.

My girlfriend currently tutors a 13-year old (soon to be 8th grader, I think) in math and english. She's Korean, and her (very) Asian mother set the job up for her, with the boy's (very) Asian mother. She gets $15 an hour for it, and I think she's been getting 6 hours a week during the summer, not sure how many she gets during the school year. She's also moving to Wisconsin September 1st. So, when we're done crying, I might steal her client.

Anyway, beyond this, what is a good way for a high-schooler to break into this? Ideally, I want to make $100 a week during the school year. Any rate from $10 to $15 per hour is fine with me.

I certainly know the subjects that I'd think about tutoring in (Math and English). I scored perfect 36's on both of those subjects on my ACT test. I'm ranked in the top 2% in my class. I have practice tutoring on the "amateur" level, or whatever. Meaning, I've spent countless hours helping people ranging from 5th graders trying to find the area of triangles to our class valedictorian's troubles with physics. I know how to explain things with clarity and I'm quite patient.

So how should I go about finding a couple of clients? Put an ad in the local paper? Our school district doesn't have any sort of tutor-student matchmaking game going on, so giving my name to middle school counselors will be pretty much worthless.

Ideally, I'd like to tutor students from 7th-10th grades. I feel quite comfortable tutoring maths from about seventh grade math to Geometry (generally 10th grade). I could tutor through high school trig, but I'd probably have to actively review/relearn some stuff as I go... so way too much work for me. English I figure I could competently tutor at very nearly any level.

Can I be a freelance SAT tutor?

Muffpub — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:54:50 -0800

I'm a college student with high test scores but no previous teaching experience. Is freelance SAT tutoring (or things of that nature) a lucrative idea or an exercise in frustration? I'm a college student looking to make extra money this summer and I keep coming back time and time again to the idea of tutoring. My SAT and ACT scores are pretty high, and I went to a well-known prestigious high school in the area. (I did well on several AP exams too, but I'm pretty sure I already missed the boat on those.)

So does anyone have an idea of how easy would it be for me to find a few clients to tutor a few hours a week for the June or October SATs if I have no previous teaching experience? I already read this, and I just don't understand why someone would go through all the formal training of Kaplan/Princeton Review/etc just to get paid less than half of what you could get freelance.

So I guess my questions are -
1. Do new, freelance tutors actually get any work? Would you trust your kid to one?
2. What, besides the SAT, could I theoretically do hourly sessions for? My math and english scores are pretty high and I never really stood out in one academic subject in high school above the others. My college major - political science - probably wouldn't have much bearing on middle/high school students.

Any ideas/experiences/input would be very helpful.

What's the going rate for tutoring?

state fxn — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:19:05 -0800

I have a B.S. in biology, and I've been asked to tutor high school students in biology and English. What's a reasonable price to charge the them? Possibly relevant details:
1. I'm in California.
2. I graduated a year ago and have a year of teaching experience (biology) as a TA while in college. I was paid $13.13/hr.
3. These high school students attend a private high school and all of them are foreign students from China (so part of the problem is the language barrier). While I do speak Chinese, I am not exactly fluent in the biology terms in Chinese.
4. It'll probably be one-on-one tutoring at the student's host family's home, which means I'll have to spend time and gas money getting there (at most, I think it's about 15 minutes). So I was thinking of setting two different rates for students who can make it to my house (e.g. biking) and those who needs me to drive to their place.

I know this situation is kind of unique. I would just like to know what other people's experience has been with something similar to this (tutoring high school students in the subject that I hold a degree). How much do I charge these students per hour?

Help me be a good vocab tutor.

crackingdes — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:37:15 -0800

I need your advice on how to help an adult English speaker expand his vocabulary to excel on the GRE. I'm going to be tutoring an adult for the first time in a couple days. He is studying for the GRE and wants help expanding his vocabulary. I believe he is a native English speaker, and if not, he's definitely fluent.

I scored highly on the verbal section of the GRE (98th percentile), so I'm confident in my knowledge of the material. But, I don't have a great deal of experience with tutoring, and I've never tutored someone my own age before. How can I be a good teacher? Do you have any good tips or tricks for helping non-verbal people expand their verbal skills? Any specific things I should avoid? Any hints, advice, or personal experiences would be very much appreciated.

Looking for: skill sharing. Will teach: napkin folding

GleepGlop — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:39:12 -0800

Does any online equivalent of a skill sharing facilitation thing exist? Bear with me while I describe I'm not talking about a message board or anything like that. A hippie-ish acquaintance once told me she was going to some kind of skill sharing session where basically you say what skills you are willing to teach and then you teach them to whoever is interested and in turn you learn from other people who are teaching things. I am envisioning an online equivalent and I'm curious to know if something like this exists. Say in my profile I have that I am an excellent snowboarder and I would like to learn weight lifting. So someone contacts me saying they know weight lifting and want to learn snowboarding. So we then kind of tutor each other either online or in person. Ultimately this harnesses the knowledge that everyday people have so we don't all have to go and pay instructors $40 /hr to learn something one on one. This is more than just asking 'what kind of snowboard should i get' in a message board, right? So does anything like this exist?

How much to charge for tutoring?

janell — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:20:57 -0800

What is the going rate for one-on-one tutoring in chemistry? I've been in discussion with a family who is interested in hiring me as a tutor for general chemistry (college), and they say they'll pay whatever, but I don't know what to charge.

A friend tells me that when she tutored in NYC, several years ago, she and other teachers charged from $80-125. Private tutoring from Princeton Review: $150. On the other hand, tutoring in Berkeley runs about $50/hr. I'm also seeing search results starting as low as $25/hour.

More info that is probably relevant: I have a PhD in the subject and this whole shebang is taking place in suburban Westchester county. I have taught classes, review sessions, and labs, but I haven't "tutored" since undergrad.

What have you charged/paid for tutoring? What should I ask for?

What should I know before tutoring Sudanese refugees in highschool?

PuGZ — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:28:10 -0800

So I'm going to start teaching English and Maths to Sudanese kids (refugees) struggling in high school for free. What should I know? I'm a high school kid myself (senior year, about to turn 18) and just today an awe-inspiring guest speaker came to our school and told us his story. Our teachers asked for an expression of interest (in tutoring kids his programme seeks to help) and I was one of a dozen or so kids that come forward. As this is a selective-entry (academic) school in the city, kids come from all over the state and we will be helping the refugees in our local areas.

My question is thus: what should I know about Sudanese culture before embarking on this? Does anyone know of any definite dos or don'ts? I want this to be a positive experience for all involved and only mean the very best, so I don't want to be misunderstood. Thanks in advance, Mefites.

How to tutor a squirmy little boy?

footnote — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 10:57:42 -0800

How to make the most of a weekly one hour reading tutoring session with a hyper 6 year old boy? My office volunteered to do weekly lunchtime reading tutoring sessions with a first grader. "Our" kid, a babyfaced little 6-year old boy, is sweet, but he cannot sit still. The sessions have devolved into battles to keep him on task -- he'll read a line out loud, then fall off his chair, then turn away and refuse to look at us, then hide his face with the book... last week, we gave up and took him back to his teacher half way through.

He's actually quite a good reader and is at the stage where he needs to be taking on the tricky, multisyllable words. Maybe the challenge tires him out? Maybe he just doesn't like us and thinks we're weird strangers and would rather be at recess? Things do seem to go better when he and I read a book out loud together, letting him sound out a few of the harder words on his own.

Another problem might be that the books we're reading are either too hard or too easy, so I'd appreciate any book suggestions. He really likes is Ezra Jack Keats's "The Snowy Day," which seems to be exactly the right level -- anything else like that?

All tips appreciated! I really don't want to give up on this kid.

Prep Session Advice

jplank — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 13:42:49 -0800

I am currently a graduate student who has been tutoring first year students in math at my university for the past 4 years. I've tutored probably over 140 students. I'd like to start doing prep sessions for exams and am looking for some advice. I plan on getting a group of 30 or so students and go over all the necessary material for upcoming exams. I've seen a few companies around campus offering to do this, but I feel I have more experience and could do it better and I'd be able to charge less since it would just be me running the prep sessions. I'm still working out the details of this, but I thought I'd ask:

1) Have any people here set up something like this? Do you have any advice about setting things up and how to run it?

2) Have any people here taken part in prep sessions like this? What sorts of things did you like about it? What things didn't you like about it?

A critical quandary in teaching composition

mikelly — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:15:40 -0800

As a tutor, how do I come up with a critical writing essay prompt that is accessible to students from third to eighth grade? I work part-time as an English tutor for a private tutoring company where my students attend a one hour session with me each week. One of their assignments is a monthly essay which I help them revise in class. They receive the prompt on the first week of the month, bring in a rough draft on the second week, a revised draft on the third week, and turn in their final draft on the last week. Our essay prompts are broad and categorical: personal, descriptive, expository, etc.

October's topic will be the critical essay, and here I'm a bit stumped on how to write the prompt. The idea, of course, is to teach the students how to engage a text critically, which I expect will be a difficult concept for the younger students to understand. The problem is that this prompt must be stated in a way that is intelligible to the younger students and still engaging for the older ones. Again, I'm dealing with third to eighth grade students.

At first, I planned on including a few selections for them to choose from with the prompt, but this seemed too boring and constricting. Besides, I want to encourage their interest in independent reading. Yet I feel that the students will need guidance in choosing a text, especially since I suspect many of them don't read on their own time at all. Because I can't expect these students to read a novel just for the assignment, I'm thinking that recommending short stories, poems, and maybe also newspaper articles is the way to go. With that said, here's the advice I'm fishing for:

1) Is there a free online resource for short stories or poems aimed at younger readers?
2) Can anyone recommend short stories or poems for this age group that I should mention in the prompt for those willing to make a library trip?
3) I’m just a college student, not a real teacher. Any advice for how to explain critical thinking to little kids is welcome, particularly in getting across the point that criticism is neither a summary nor a love/hate opinion. (To make sure the kids are on track, I plan on asking them only for an outline with critical statements and evidence in lieu of a rough draft on the second week.)

Tutor the tutor

glip — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:41:46 -0800

Tutoring Filter: first-time tutoring a young boy in French. He's in grade 4. Naturally, there's A co-worker wants me to help tutor her child, specifically with his French. He's not in immersion and this is his first year in public school, so I reckon he is probably above-average, and his mum would like him to stay that way. How can I best help him excel?

For our first meeting, I'm going to have him do some reading aloud, to get a sense of his proficiency, and look at some of his assignments to see what the class is doing. Does this seem prudent? Anything that I should avoid? I assume keeping the sessions short would be good?

I did French Immersion, so I know that he won't be where I was in grade 4, but any pointers about working with younger kids would help. Links to some good exercises too. I'm in Ontario, Canada btw.

OMG my paper is teh suxors!!!!!

bibliowench — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 11:28:01 -0800

Does anyone hear have experience working with and/or setting up a synchronous online component for a college writing center? I'm working with our community college writing center to set up an online writing tutor program for evening hours. We don't have any money or expertise to build or buy software, and we're in the process of switching from one course management system (Blackboard) to another (Vista), with extremely painful results. As a consequence, we don't want to use the chat rooms in either of those programs just yet. (Plus, they suck, IMHO).

My suggestion was to set up accounts with the major IM services and have the tutors use these accounts through Trillian/Adium to answer simple questions. (These tutors would be working from home on their own computers). I argued that the process would be almost transparent for students who were accustomed to IM-ing. Students who weren't, or who needed a more extensive session with their essays, could use our email tutors or come in-person to the center during weekdays.

But the writing center director has his heart set on recreating the "physical writing center experience," which for him means a whiteboard program where students could upload their papers and see our edits in real time. I showed the group Writeboard, but they nixed it for being too confusing and having ads.

Has anyone had success with online writing centers in the past? What worked for you? What didn't? Is there any way I can accommodate my director's ideas with our financial/technological limitations?

How do I get started in tutoring?

JoshTeeters — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:07:58 -0800

I'm thinking about trying to get into tutoring, particularly English tutoring. I've worked with ESL students via the internet before, but that has been on a mutual basis: I've helped them improve their English while they helped me improve my German. What steps would I need to take to get started in my area? Do I need any particular qualifications? Should I go to the schools, or perhaps to the University in town? How does one get started in tutoring as a part-time job?

Tips for a new standardized test tutor?

electric_counterpoint — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 13:42:44 -0800

So I'm applying for a standardized test (LSAT) tutoring position, right? I've got an "audition" next week, where I need to prove that I can teach. The material isn't as important as the ability to understand and react to the needs of the individual student. Any tips for one-on-one teaching like this? I'm not really looking for LSAT-specific tips (if I get the job, I'll learn my employer's method). Instead, I'm just interested in finding knock-em-dead ideas to communicate the material to a student. I'd say some level of tutoring comes naturally to me (I've been teaching a few people informally before this), but I want to have a well-rehearsed lesson prepared so that I'm not too nervous when my "student" is a potential boss.

(For what it's worth, LSAT veterans, I'm teaching a logical reasoning section -- AKA arguments)

Thanks!