I have been seeing several articles in various places wrt affluent and well-off parents, either individually or in groups, hiring teachers to run 'learning pods' for their kids, who will likely be forced to do full- or at least part-time remote learning this semester, even if their schools start up fully ftf (and some of these parents will not send their kids back to ftf school even if their school is going to do that). Some of these pods are themselves online, whereas others are ftf, and some, as said, are just for one family, whereas others are for groups of families. Anyone personally familiar with any such efforts? Any of you serving as such a teacher (or, relatedly, tutor)? Anyone have any thoughts? I have decided to try to line up some such work for myself around here, though my immediate area is a community where, ahem, well-off parents who would be both willing and able to hire me are not thick on the ground, and where, even amongst those parents who could do that, education valuing is not high, not a high priority (as I sadly found out when I worked for the now-defunct Christian school back in the day). Is this, IOW, a viable notion?
We have people forming learning pods here. The community FaceBook page has people advertising to be tutors.
However, the part that seems to be working out is people who have significant experience as nannies/lower elementary teachers are getting 3-5 kids from 2-3 families who are already best friends with the tasks as a lot of reading and science activities interspersed with play.
The actual tutors for middle school and high school are being ignored in favor of parents rotating time at home, again among close friends, to supervise the remote learning and promote social interactions. I see some activity on math tutors and mentors for various science activities, but nothing like a private tutor as the full-time adult.
How much are these learning-pod teachers making? For, say, $50,000 per semester, I may look into doing that during my spring sabbatical.
Quote from: writingprof on August 14, 2020, 05:25:36 AM
How much are these learning-pod teachers making? For, say, $50,000 per semester, I may look into doing that during my spring sabbatical.
We're an affluent community where it's not rare to have a part-time nanny. I would be surprised if anyone is making more than $20k for the semester.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/covid-schools-learning-pods.html claims $30-100 per hour.
Isn't this basically what organized homeschooling looks like? I've long thought those were underused by people who could afford them, but aren't wealthy enough to pay for the top private schools.
At $100/hr for a teacher, 40 hours per week of instruction, and 10 kids per class, you're looking at $1,600 per month per child. That's less than half the cost of a fancy private school and, if you're selective about which kids to "admit," you could create a really good learning community.
$100/ hour per kid for a group experience sounds really steep. You would have to live in a very wealthy area to be able to do that, or otherwise have the contacts amongst the very rich. Even $100/hr for solo tutoring is very high.
Even though, as I said, I am certainly not living in a wealthy OR education-valuing area, I am still going to try this, at least to see what happens.
Quote from: pigou on August 14, 2020, 03:10:18 PM
At $100/hr for a teacher, 40 hours per week of instruction, and 10 kids per class, you're looking at $1,600 per month per child. That's less than half the cost of a fancy private school and, if you're selective about which kids to "admit," you could create a really good learning community.
Yes, it's possible. But the fancy private school comes with a whole bunch of other stuff (tennis courts! science labs!) that you're less able to recreate at home. Not to mention the difficulty of juggling to hire not 1 tutor at $100/hr, but a rotating cast of several (or is one tutor going to do calculus, English lit, chemistry, music and Mandarin?).
Quote from: bacardiandlime on August 15, 2020, 02:44:18 AM
Quote from: pigou on August 14, 2020, 03:10:18 PM
At $100/hr for a teacher, 40 hours per week of instruction, and 10 kids per class, you're looking at $1,600 per month per child. That's less than half the cost of a fancy private school and, if you're selective about which kids to "admit," you could create a really good learning community.
Yes, it's possible. But the fancy private school comes with a whole bunch of other stuff (tennis courts! science labs!) that you're less able to recreate at home. Not to mention the difficulty of juggling to hire not 1 tutor at $100/hr, but a rotating cast of several (or is one tutor going to do calculus, English lit, chemistry, music and Mandarin?).
You call a service or work with your contact group to hire the rotating cast when you're dipping your toe into that level.
When you're comfortably at that level, you have an assistant, majordomo, housekeeper, butler, or someone else who does the organization of this along with everything else.
We're not at that level yet, but I already get recommendations on people to make my life easier for daily tasks. We have multiple lawyers, an accountant, a financial planner, a lawn service, a pest service, and contractors with whom we regularly work to do household repairs and improvements.
Discussion among my colleagues at work frequently touch on the private education options including supplemental activities available, the need to have at least a shared housekeeper (visits for a few hours a few times per week), and hiring assistants for a couple hours every week to run errands or do the research to assemble the lists for summer camp, tutors, etc.
Nobody does all this by themselves. The frequent suggestion is to hire out everything that is drudgery so that one can parent and have a high-intensity career.
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 14, 2020, 09:59:16 PM
$100/ hour per kid for a group experience sounds really steep. You would have to live in a very wealthy area to be able to do that, or otherwise have the contacts amongst the very rich. Even $100/hr for solo tutoring is very high.
Even though, as I said, I am certainly not living in a wealthy OR education-valuing area, I am still going to try this, at least to see what happens.
I don't think the suggestion is per kid. It's per hour. If three parents want you to pod-school their children, that's $33/hr each, which is better; with ten parents, it's an eminently reasonable $10/hr. Your hourly fee is whatever you want it to be, and you flash your PhD around to justify it, then you decide how many children/family groups you can take at once.
https://www.weareteachers.com/learning-pods/?utm_content=1597527780 has suggestions for teachers considering pods.
Anyone have any updates on this topic, esp given the experience of the last three months wrt running k12 schools again during the pandemic, and even more esp given the recent pandemic case spike? I confess I have just gotten round to trying to line something up, after a very few efforts earlier-- I have placed several group subscription requests to various FB groups, and set up a 'private teacher and tutor' page there (which I have as yet done little to advertise). I am going to take the plunge tonight and try to send out some local FB-oriented feeler posts, but am deeply leery of 1) violating any protocols regarding commercialization of FB posts and 2) pissing off my FB friends (even though some of them are friends of friends of friends, etc). I confess further that the main reason I have not really done anything along these lines to date is that I realllllllyyyyyy hate salesmanship, selling myself, cold-call work, etc. thoughts most appreciated...
We have learning pods here. However, the demand is for either people with relevant K-3 experience, ideally as Montessori or similar teachers, or essentially as college students taking a break working for cheap. Some tutoring is available for music or math at the middle school and high school level.
I have to ask why you think FaceBook posts with the people you already know is the way to advertise your services as a private tutor pod leader.
I can see working through your church or other volunteer activities that are educational.
You are a Sunday school teacher or similar known youth leader, right?
The folks at the library know you as that responsible fellow who leads youth activities, right?
Perhaps you have organized educational activities at a museum or similar non-profit entity for the relevant age groups?
You've volunteered in the local school system so teachers can recommend you, right?
If you've done nothing recently in the relevant areas and aren't currently certified as either a tutor or teacher, then why would anyone hire you? If you can think of a great reason why someone should give you money to tutor, then that's what you put in your ad and those are the folks you target. Buying targeted FaceBook ads used to be very cheap and that's what you need to do if you want to be successful in this area and you haven't spent the last couple years building the word-of-mouth network you need.
There are Community-Bulletin-Board-like groups and listserv-like lists in most larger towns, on which I advertise my music students a couple times a year. I get a couple of referrals every few months from students' parents who are on those boards, as well.
I charge 45/hr per student and 25/hr for classes of 2-6 students; I just went up from 40/20 in the fall after checking in with my students' parents to be sure that wouldn't be a hardship. If I have 2 or 3 kids in the same family and they aren't quite as well off, I charge less for the 2nd and 3rd kids (especially if they're good students) and I currently have 8 private students (one more will start next week) and one weekly class running.
I've also done tutoring, same rates, etc., and have considered putting courses together for groups of kids, but until I finish with the PT non-profit group I support until12/31, I have enough to deal with.
I've considered pushing to do more home-school based work (I have friends and contacts to start working with; could do French, math up to Algebra Ii, English lit and comp., history, and a variety of arts and culture/social studies offerings) and I'd use the same resources for that.
I eschew Facebook like the plague; I have a Twitter account and landing/blog site I use for my summer tours; could probably set up something similar if I were to do more tutoring/teaching outside of music, too.
But right now I've got my hands full.
Just if that helps in thinking about which resources are useful and how to set things up.
M.
Anyone who would look at my resume would see the extensive experience I have as a teacher of various subjects and with students ranging in age from 4th grade to senior citizens. I have also done much tutoring, and of course have professional library credentials. But you know this already. Anyone wanting to hire someone for a learning pod in my area, in any of the subjects that I have experience in, could really do little better than me. FB posts would of course allow me to target friends of friends, etc., and get my name out there. I have little money to pay FB for any ads, and limited faith that any such ads would be fruitful, and would not piss off my friends.
Volunteering to get a network together to perhaps land paid employment opps sounds very nice. But it will not pay my rent, and it would probably depress me greatly to do it, in the sense that I would feel put upon, giving PhD level instruction to these schools for free, and I do not want to do that, even if I could afford it. Teaching the volunteer history classes for the local senior citizen foundation, otoh, was fun, professionally and spiritually fulfilling, and I will be doing it again (unless I do get a real job that would prevent it). Church work opps are limited, but I have taken advantage of the chances I have gotten in this area. Volunteering for library programs is rather more problematic, in the sense that many librarians, i.e. paid professional library staff, are actually very leery of letting a serious professional do serious work in that area (and again, for me professionally, there would also be that feeling of being used, put upon, doing this for no money).
Mamselle-- do you actually get much work from Twitter? Why do you prefer it to FB? And what is a 'landing/ blog site'? Thanks again as always.
You need a website or blogsite or something like it to direct people to...a place for them to land, so as not to have to go trawling back through a series of posts (or emailing you several times) just to find basics. I suppose Facebook could do that, but I just don't like it....it will eat you alive if you have to keep answering posts to keep your page focused, etc.
Its openness to others' comments is fine for family-friends-opinion-type stuff, but I just don't see it as very professional.
I don't like Twitter much more, because their formatting issues are crazy-making when you're trying to do a significant visual (say, a gravestone photo) to go with a tour announcement and the proportions get shifted due to whatever weird algorithm is embedded in the framing setup..
But I can usually wrestle it to the ground,, get a quick announcement out,, pick up a few more "likes" or followers while I'm at it, and be on my way. I use it to complement my weekly leafleting in the summers (again, this is for tours, but one year about 5 years ago, I did a series of children's activities, which netted one of the families I've worked with ever since.)
And they referred me to another family I've taught and tutored over the past 4 years, which is how it usually goes.
Much longer ago, when I was doing more dance teaching, I also ran a series of dance choirs: two children's groups, and one or two adult groups, divided by age and length of study, and the older children's group was primarily composed of a small cluster of homeschooled kids who took the class as one of the phys.ed activities (community soccer was the other).
Now, they might be called a "pod," then it was just a group of very bright kids whose parents got together to do enrichment programs in their areas of interest and ended up homeschooling them.
I worked with them up through Jr. high school, then they split off to go to various high schools--they'd in fact come together first through their church's faith ed program, so some went to a parochial high school, others to public or private schools, and did decently for themselves.
We just met up at an event last fall, they're all out of college and working now--and that's one thing about working with homeschooling settings, you may become more a part of the students' lives, than in a public school setting.
And you'll also sometimes be under closer scrutiny--i had no trouble with people telling me how and what to teach, but that can happen if several parents have different interests or ideas in mind.
M.
Cold calls and sales is much harder when the groundwork hasn't been laid with any sort of market research on what people want and then aiming the pitch at how you provide that.
Quote from: kaysixteen on November 12, 2020, 07:00:39 PM
Anyone who would look at my resume would see the extensive experience I have as a teacher of various subjects and with students ranging in age from 4th grade to senior citizens. I have also done much tutoring, and of course have professional library credentials. But you know this already. Anyone wanting to hire someone for a learning pod in my area, in any of the subjects that I have experience in, could really do little better than me. FB posts would of course allow me to target friends of friends, etc., and get my name out there. I have little money to pay FB for any ads, and limited faith that any such ads would be fruitful, and would not piss off my friends.
Let's say I'm a busy mom looking for someone to just ensure that the kids don't kill each other for a few hours a day and it'd be nice if the kids logged into their online classes most days for most of the time. Why do I pick you over a college student who only wants minimum wage + 2 bucks?
Let's say I'm a busy mom who really wants a teacher for my three kids: 4, 6, and 8. Why do I pick you over the Montessori-trained person who is expensive, but does exactly what I want in terms of daily experience?
Let's say I'm a busy mom who hates my current setup of plunking the kids in the basement in front of their screens, but I literally have only 5 minutes a day to look for something better. What have you set up for advertising that will come to my attention through some sort of channel I don't even have to think about and will only take me 30 seconds to skim to conclude, "I've got to get that kaysixteen on the job pronto"?
I don't question that you have some relevant experience. I question exactly that you have established a word-of-mouth network that will get you what you want with minimal advertising or that the newly created whatever you're doing on FaceBook will be effective because the focus does not appear to be geared towards the audience needs.
Yeah, no one gets paid to establish the professional network when needed. That's why people need to be working on that professional network starting as soon as they are exploring what their profession is likely to be, much like they study hard in classes. The generic social networks formed from people like oneself often don't overlap with the professional needs for people who have graduate (or even many college) educations. Neglecting those networks makes doing the professional aspects much, much harder and that's when one can apply to an open job. Neglecting the networks and trying to create one's own job is almost impossible if one refuses to really dig into the marketing aspects.
Quote from: kaysixteen on November 12, 2020, 07:00:39 PM
Teaching the volunteer history classes for the local senior citizen foundation, otoh, was fun, professionally and spiritually fulfilling, and I will be doing it again (unless I do get a real job that would prevent it). Church work opps are limited, but I have taken advantage of the chances I have gotten in this area. Volunteering for library programs is rather more problematic, in the sense that many librarians, i.e. paid professional library staff, are actually very leery of letting a serious professional do serious work in that area (and again, for me professionally, there would also be that feeling of being used, put upon, doing this for no money).
Maybe some of those seniors you've worked with have children and grandchildren, or other family, looking for the kind of help you're offering.
Don't rule out using any library opportunities to network, if that's a place where you're already known.
Polly makes a good point about needing to find ways to tailor your pitch to your likely customers. You need to speak with some local parents and get an idea of what they want. Remember, it's about THEIR needs. Then try to contact the parents looking for the sort of service you are best able to offer.
I know that marketing is not a congenial activity for many of us, but it's how we get our word out to those who might benefit from our services. Librarians have long since had to learn how to do this. The essence of marketing is finding out what people want or need and making a case that you can offer that.
Are you still in the same geographical region as the now-defunct Christian school? That is the network I would use first if I wanted to find a pod: I would let former secondary school students and parents (ideally the ones who liked me the most) know that I was available for tutoring if they knew anyone who was looking. I might even do this if I weren't in the same geographic region, because many of my old students and their families traveled widely and had family and friends in further-off locations.
I think you mentioned your general region on another thread, and I think you are in or close to a major metropolitan area with several large and prestigious universities. Are there faculty members there with whom you have professional acquaintance? They would already know your credentials and might be able to connect you with colleagues whose children would benefit from the tutoring and subjects you can provide.
I agree with apl68 that the seniors might also have some useful connections.
AR.
Also chiming to apl68's note about libraries.
When I've taught French students who don't live close to me, the library study rooms have been very important in making things more convenient--ours has two, plus an "OK to tutor quietly here" floor, with a "silent floor" down one flight.
Not options now, of course, but the other thing the library had was a vertical file into which one could submit 1-page leaflets. There was also a community bulletin board that you could post on; the reference librarians in charge of it would initial and date your post, and it could be up for two months, then they'd take it down to let others have a chance; after another month you could post another one for two months.
Since you probably want to create two or three flyers (I have one for music, one for English/Math/Social Studies, and one for tours/children's historical activities) to segment your market and appeal to different sub-groups, you benefit by rotating those flyers as well.
And also, chime to marketing. It's not a "bad, terrible, awful" thing (except that it takes time and can get fiddly when you're formatting something and the MSWord tables are fighting back): It's how you let people know what you're able to do and how you can help them do what they want to do.
A conversion to that mind-set is sometimes the hardest for folks who've always been in scholastic settings where the school does the PR/marketing for you and you do the teaching. The good part about it is that you control the message and the means of its being shared.
Get a designer to do a good job for you if you're unused to doing your own graphics; as one goes along, one picks up enough mad skillz to do ones own pages, but working with someone to begin with is a good idea: and either plan to pay them or find alternative arrangements that suit both parties.
You may be able to find a swap-mate who will do that for you in return, for, say, translating a 13th c. artist's notebook entries in Latin that they're studying for an Art History paper....or explaining the history of a Roman imperial colony where ceramics were made and traded that is not well-referenced.
Think outside the box(es).
M.
I think the time to get hired for a learning pod has come and gone. There are only a certain number of parents who can afford to set up such a thing, and most would have done so before the beginning of the school year. But I bet there's a pretty good market out there for tutoring and enrichment activities—parents who would be interested in having someone come to their home and work with their children for an hour or two a week (although for you that would mean exposure to a fair number of people).
A simple way to find a few students might be to put up flyers around your area with pull-off tabs with your phone number or e-mail address. Color printing gets expensive quickly, so I would go with black and white. You might look at the websites for tutoring agencies to see what they offer and how they describe their personnel in order to get an idea of what to stress in your flyer. You might want to include your hourly rate in order to limit contacts from people who don't want to pay more than ten or fifteen dollars an hour. Still, you'll need to be competitive since you don't have an established business already—maybe something like twenty-five dollars an hour?
Quote from: fleabite on November 13, 2020, 03:16:03 PM
I think the time to get hired for a learning pod has come and gone. There are only a certain number of parents who can afford to set up such a thing, and most would have done so before the beginning of the school year. But I bet there's a pretty good market out there for tutoring and enrichment activities—parents who would be interested in having someone come to their home and work with their children for an hour or two a week (although for you that would mean exposure to a fair number of people).
A simple way to find a few students might be to put up flyers around your area with pull-off tabs with your phone number or e-mail address. Color printing gets expensive quickly, so I would go with black and white. You might look at the websites for tutoring agencies to see what they offer and how they describe their personnel in order to get an idea of what to stress in your flyer. You might want to include your hourly rate in order to limit contacts from people who don't want to pay more than ten or fifteen dollars an hour. Still, you'll need to be competitive since you don't have an established business already—maybe something like twenty-five dollars an hour?
There might be new learning pod opportunities opening in the new year. Of course now is the time to be getting one's name out there for them. In the meantime, fleabite is no doubt correct about learning and enrichment activities. We have a part-time staff member here who also does some tutoring.
Fleabite raises a good point about a determining a competitive hourly rate. I won't try to guess what to suggest there. The local tutoring grapevine should be a place to learn some ideas about that.
Going from house to house conducting in-person learning is a good way to become a superspreader. All it needs is one student in one house to be infectious, and you will be the common link that connects a large number of households. Even if the kids themselves bounce back quickly, their elderly, asthmatic, overweight or immune-compromised relatives may not. And if parents let a tutor come to the house in person, they are not the kind of people who are taking other precautions against infection.
Random observations and replies (thanking all for the responses):
1) Hegemony is not wrong. I have considered not doing this at this time for this very reason. I would think long and hard about how to do it correctly, if possible, should I get anyone to offer me work.
2) I am living in an area that is both a) lower-income and b) anti-education, very working class, etc.-- there is very limited call for this work here, no local 'tutoring community', etc. (both private businesses I have done homeschool-oriented work for in recent years are for all intents and purposes not doing that any longer, but just doing various extracurriculars, and I did interview at a long-established tutor business in a nearby town, back in Sept., and the woman was trying to put a positive spin on it, but her business has essentially toileted since being shut down by the state for a couple of months in the spring. This limits my ability to network with similar folks around here, and would strongly limit the amount of money I could charge for this sort of work. One hopes it could be possible to do it for something, but i am not sanguine that it would be more than pocket money around here. It certainly is not worth outlaying a significant amount of money in advertising, marketing, etc. And I do not have the money to do that, even if I wanted to.
3) Sadly, though all the parents and former colleagues from my school, church, know of me and my services, none have shown the slightest interest in doing so. We could discuss why that is...
4) The reason I had not done the pandemic research sooner is, ahem, clear enough to me, on reflection in the last few days, is simply that I hate sales work, marketing, with an unbridled passion. As a kid/ young adult, I did take various standardized career aptitude tests over the years, and 'sales' was more or less always at the very bottom, with scores that could hardly be lower. I agree with this assessment, like it or not, and my much greater age by now has not done much to change this (probably has even hardened my opposition to this, especially given my religious views on pride, humility, etc.).
4) It probably is a good idea, however, for me to tell the librarians I am interested in doing some of this sort of thing, the next time I go in there to fetch books.
5) I could ask some of those seniors I was teaching to recommend me, etc., but am wondering whether this would be appropriate, or seen as gauche, presumptuous, etc.?
6) I get the general idea of convincing people to want something/ trying to figure out what they want. That said, the teacher in me also remembers that there are times when one needs to say 'you need this, whether you like it or not', and to say, 'I am outta here, if you refuse'.
The librarians would probably be glad to help connect prospective educators with prospective clients. Librarians love a chance to facilitate anything to do with education.
I doubt that the seniors you've taught would see anything wrong with your asking them for recommendations. To them, you're a teacher. They'd have no reason to object to your efforts to find others to teach. Some of them would probably love to help out, if they can.
I get that you don't like marketing. I've always been skeptical of it myself, and have never felt that I had any natural aptitude for it. But I believe in my work at the library, and I love to talk about it. I've found that that translates into "marketing" what we do at the library to the community.
Look at it this way--you are a part of the community, with a number of different contacts within it. You have something to offer the community. Maybe the demand for it in the community is limited, yet it does exist. Getting the word out about what you have to offer, so that prospective clients have the opportunity to take advantage of it, is of benefit to the community, and to yourself.
Re pride and humility--I get that too. I've always been acutely aware of my shortcomings at...well, nearly everything, including my work as a librarian. And yet I know that I provide valuable and useful services to the community. What I have to offer is valuable, despite my own shortcomings. So I have a duty to offer it with confidence--if not pride and confidence in myself, then confidence in what I'm offering. Try thinking about the services you have to offer in that way. Don't "believe in yourself." Believe in what you're doing!
Just quickly responding to one thing--I wasn't even thinking of doing live tutoring right now--sorry if that was unclear.
You need to be Zoom literate and PowerPoint savvy to teach at present.
I don't even plan to be able to do live tours or childrens' activities NEXT summer, let alone now.
And you should be able to pick up some gigs. Just don't count on covering all your expenses with them right now. It takes time to build a clientele.
The most attractive title will be "Homework Helper." That's what parents need to assuage their feelings of being so exhausted and time-tied from work that they can't help the kids with their school work.
And you really need a good, clear firm but kind bedside manner with the kids. My tutoring student last spring had 4 different topics every day, plus me egging him along to do the work. We arrived at a daily plan that worked, but it took a couple of weeks to get there.
Another thought: if you're still working retail, no way will anyone want you in their homes.
Just being real here.
Good luck.
M.
I will ask the librarians the next time I see them.
I am pretty darn certain I have lost out on jobs before because of perceived unwillingness and/or inability to 'market'-- several school headmasters have more or less said this, wrt the mandatory Latin classes classical Christian schools require. Natural lack of sales aptitude notwithstanding, I have several issues wrt saying anything that I believe may not be true. It does not have to be an outright lie, which of course I will not tell, but pumping up things beyond what the facts bear is almost the same, and I do not want to do that either. To a certain degree, I want just to offer my services, as they are, and see who might be interested. I have a lot to offer but do not really know how to offer it well, without doing the sort of dossier-padding that, well, ahem...
I do not want to go into someone's home, if at all possible. I would prefer to use space at a public library, which can be controlled, reasonably distanced, and masked up. I do not do powerpoint, and it won't be necessary for what I do tutor or teach. I thankfully have now the experience, with the senior citizen institute, with Zoom. I get that there would be real advantages to doing this sort of learning pod stuff online, and will do it if asked, but remain somewhat concerned about guaranteeing that I will actually get paid. I have no money or inclination to attempt to accept credit cards.
I am guardedly optimistic that those seniors would be willing to recommend me-- any suggestions as to how best to ask them?
I know from some of your previous posts that you are not very comfortable with learning new technology. But if you would be willing to throw yourself into that—treated as a research project—there seems to be pretty good demand for online tutors right now. I just heard about this service, https://www.tutor.com/apply (https://www.tutor.com/apply), which is owned by the Princeton Review. They offer tutoring that spans an extremely wide range of subjects, and the fact that you have a PhD and teaching experience would probably make you a strong candidate.
On the one hand, that could work, and it's worth trying it out. Agencies can definitely extend your reach if you're just starting.
On the other, I've tried two or three times to use groups like that: it's often very finicky and not always productive. (But I don't have any experience with this group, in this setting--a friend used to teach their test-prep classes, but not tutoring. They might be fine, there are just some things to watch for).
One of the ones I tried to use wanted a written "blurb" for each subject heading, which was fine, but those take time to construct. The agency also charged clients a stiff fee for each class, and at least one didn't pay you outright, they'd take their cut off the first lesson and then if the client continued, you would get paid after that. So check their fee structures and payment arrangements carefully--they're in business for themselves first, usually...
I rarely got requests for the topics I signed up to teach, also--just very oddly-focused sideways requests that didn't make sense. I could go back through my old emails from them, if a summary is of interest, but my basic response was that it wasn't as useful as I'd hoped.
I think "Ant" was one, I can't remember the names of the others....and in any case, I've found word-of-mouth and local newspaper ads and articles to work better.
If you can find an angle on your own work, and send in an "announcement-like" copy of something like, "K16, long an instructor for advanced students, is now broadening their outreach in working with younger students...." etc.
Make it sound like an article, but it's really ad copy. (An old PR trick, useful for grants, too...)
The town chat lines are the best for getting your name around; I think I mentioned that before.
M.
Quote from: kaysixteen on November 16, 2020, 05:10:20 PM
I am pretty darn certain I have lost out on jobs before because of perceived unwillingness and/or inability to 'market'
So you know the problem, but you don't want to find a solution. Look, you need some tough love here. Either you want to find work as a tutor, or you don't.
QuoteI do not do powerpoint, and it won't be necessary for what I do tutor or teach.
ok...
QuoteI have no money or inclination to attempt to accept credit cards.
Right. So you don't want to make it easy for anyone to hire you.
If your only recommendations are from seniors, what are they recommending you as? You obviously didn't tutor them in HS Latin.
You need recommendations
for the gig you're looking for. And you need to act like it's something you actually WANT TO DO, which none of your posts here (with their endless caveats and won't won't won't) I'm really not seeing.
Random points:
1) Two years ago, I actually spent a fair amount of time in a library researching and then applying for/ signing up for, several online tutor services. I was 'accepted' into all of them, set up my blurbs on their sites, etc., and got exactly one hit, which was a scam. The guy in question wanted to hire me to tutor his kid, but insisted I send him my SS#-- this sounded hinky to me so I emailed the tutor co in question and they told me that it was a scam, this was never the way they did it, and they got rid of the guy. That obvious bad experience notwithstanding, literally no other hits from any of these services, in two years. I am not sure what else I could do with these services to increase the chances that I could get a gig, but, again, in my area, there is likely to be little if any business here, and, while of course I could do online tutoring, now that I have the computer and Zoom experience, there are only limited options for this, and much competition, many with loads of experience.
2) I am not a sales guy. Really, I ain't. Sue me. I am doing the best I can, but this idea is really just a pocket money idea, with no likelihood that it would ever be able to become more than this. Anyone who looks at my resume can tell what my background is, what my strengths are, but they would have to look at the resume to see it. But it was hard enough for me to even write the resume according to the (apparent) 21st century expected standards of braggadocio (according to the expensive career counselor I hired 3 years back)-- I did this, but I am never going to like doing this sort of thing.
3) Enough with the classist criticism of my unwillingness to spend money I do not have (which of course is not even unwillingness) in the vague hope that I might get a few bucks' return from that investment. If I had money to spend like this, I would have gone back to grad school to try to make myself more marketable, but I do not, so I won't, and all the more so since, at my age, it would likely not be useful anyhow.
If you are looking to make pocket money there are easier ways to do that don't require extensive marketing. Textbroker, outschool and alike jump to mind. You won't be making a lot of money, and the companies take a cut of course, but for extra income they might work. Plus you can work for these from the safety of your home without having to worry about potential COVID risks. Just an idea.
Around where I live, there is still a market for part-time in-home tutors who will oversee the students zoom school while the parents are working. We have a neighborhood FB page where someone will advertise their availability and a number of people will say they are interested. Sometimes it is a college student and some of the discussion involves parents specifying that they want someone who is distancing and presumably not going to bars. My friend is paying someone $15,000 for the entire school year to come in three days a week - maybe 9-3 to work with 3 kids (2 in the same class because a neighboring family is in the pod) and the tutor is an otherwise unemployed recent MSW.
Thanks for the ideas. I confess I have never heard the terms 'textbroker' and 'outschooler' before-- care to offer specs?
I'd love to do what dismal suggests, but there would have to be a market for it. I can do Zoom work remotely with kids anywhere, but around here, no one is going to hire me to work ftf for anything remotely resembling $15k, though I will keep looking.
Quote from: kaysixteen on November 26, 2020, 08:57:32 PM
Thanks for the ideas. I confess I have never heard the terms 'textbroker' and 'outschooler' before-- care to offer specs?
https://www.textbroker.com
https://outschool.com/
There are other companies offering these types of online services, so if you are interested in either, a bit of googling will show you other options as well.