The old saying “The days are long but the years are short” is so incredibly true. When I actually sit down and think about it, I can’t believe I’ve been teaching for almost 30 years. Same school, same subject, same classroom! Then I realize I have also been tutoring for the same amount of time!
I have had several very different tutoring experiences. I spent many years doing tutoring through my school, going to homes to help kids out of school due to illness or injury. Some of those were good and some not so good, usually depending on the environment the students lived in. My school also had an alternative high school program at night for suspended kids where I worked for 28 years. That job alone could provide innumerable stories to post here and I’ll share some eventually.
The third type of tutoring I have done is for the SAT English exam. I have sat at many kitchen tables in my county, going over practice exam after practice exam with a wide variety of kids. I got so busy in 2015, I opened a brick-and-mortar tutoring center in my town. Successful from the start, I hired many of my colleagues and we helped dozens of local, and sometimes not so local, students with a wide variety of subjects. After a few years, however, we burned out. Teaching from 7-3 and then tutoring from 3-8 five days a week was unsustainable, even though it was both emotionally and financially rewarding. As it turns out, I am so grateful we all threw in the towel when we did – December 1, 2019. We got out three months before we would have been forced to shut down (but still have to pay rent).
Since the Covid days, my enthusiasm for tutoring waned. I went back and worked with a young man I had been tutoring since he was in 6th grade (and whose mother I worked with) but that was it. I missed it but not enough to have it take over hours of my life again. During that time, I took a free, non-education course offered by one of my favorite podcasters. All of the material was delivered via text message. A lightbulb moment for me! I could compile all of the best tips and information I found myself repeating frequently during the SAT tutoring sessions and send them out to students everywhere at a much lower cost that traditional hourly tutoring sessions. It takes less time for everyone, it’s less expensive for the students/parents, but it contains the best of my 30 years experience. It’s a win-win!
I am super excited about this project. Students and a parent/guardian sign up, a group chat is created including the three of us (I think it’s important and wise for the parent to see the conversation between me, a potential stranger, and their child), and starting 30 days prior to the test the student is scheduled to take, I send a tip every day. There are apps that do something similar but they don’t provide potential interactivity where the student can ask for clarification, or I can even push the student to complete a short exercise involving the SAT tip. My own students, especially juniors, are so busy with their coursework, athletics, clubs, jobs, and social life, that this can fit right in easily. Putting aside an hour or two a week for traditional tutoring often doesn’t fit their lifestyles.
If this could be useful for you or someone you know, please email me at [email protected] I am excited to help kids prepare for this exam again!! (I hate the SAT; my goal is to teach the kids not just English vocab and grammar but also ways to beat the test!!)