“Lighting the Torch of Knowledge”
Why Teach With Us?
This page, Why Teach With Us?, helps you decide whether or not to tutor for us. Since you're reading this, you probably want to tutor our students, either on a part-time or a full-time basis. Since, of course, you could try to obtain students on your own or through another tutoring service, why should you choose to work with us?
|
Site Index |
|
 |
This page covers the following topics:
We advertise in yellow page directories. Those with access to the internet can visit our website and use our service. As a result, we receive a tremendous number of tutoring calls and inquiries each and every day.
Consequently, we can offer our tutors many more teaching assignments than they could obtain on their own or through other tutoring services.
Since there are so many competing tutoring services, we know it's essential to return calls promptly. If too much time passes (and this can be just a few hours), there's a good chance potential clients will have already made arrangements with someone else.
Suppose we have ten potential clients to call back. While we'll reach some on our first attempt, more than half require several calls and messages before we succeed in making contact. When we finally reach the parents, they tell us about the student's problems and we, in turn, describe our service and fees. About seven of these ten parents will choose to continue searching for a tutor. We finish the remaining three and obtain what we need to assign tutors.
As you can easily see, acquiring three new students takes a lot of time and effort, all of which you can save if you work with us. All you need do is wait for us to place new students with you, call the parents to set up a first appointment and start teaching.
We carefully screen all potential clients. In fact, we'll place a new student with you only if we're convinced the parents are sincere, want one of our tutors, can pay the fee, intend to set up a first appointment when the tutor calls and agree to honor our cancellation policy. We don't hesitate to turn down potential clients about whom we are dubious or have given us the feeling that something's not right with the family.
So, students we place with you aren't likely to pose a danger to you. After all, we have a great deal of experience screening both students and families and, so far, we've never had a problem.
Classroom teachers are very fortunate. They take education courses, read education books and have supervised student teaching to learn effective and successful classroom management techniques. As a result, they're able to function well during the first several years of teaching and have ample time to develop their own methods.
Unfortunately, private tutors have none of these advantages. There are no courses, no books and no student teaching opportunities to learn how to become a tutor. In fact, the only way to become a successful, effective tutor is . . . experience, experience and more experience.
As a result, tutoring someone is like having to reinvent the wheel. New tutors certainly try to do their best but, having nothing and no one to learn from, inevitably flounder during their first several years of tutoring. Since classroom teaching is so different from private tutoring, many classroom teachers also make mistakes during their initial attempts at tutoring.
So, new tutors have to spend their first several years experimenting with different techniques. Using a process of trial and error, they find some which work and some which don't. What works is then refined and perfected; what doesn't get scrapped and replaced by, hopefully, more effective techniques. Even tutors with 20 or 30 years of experience still discover better techniques to replace less effective ones. While this process may eventually produce a good tutor, it also produces a lot of ineffective tutoring, disappointed parents and students who quit after one or two lessons along the way.
Well, we've carefully examined our over forty years of experience giving tens of thousands of lessons to thousands of students to discover what techniques work best in the context of private, one-to-one, home tutoring. By writing up our findings and sharing them with those who work with us, our teachers can gain in a few months the experience it would ordinarily take tutors years to accumulate. In effect, we provide our teachers with education courses and tutoring techniques not available elsewhere.
For the most part, tutors get very little respect. When asked about one's profession, an answer of "doctor", "lawyer", "accountant" or "teacher" will usually evoke some degree of respect on the part of the inquirer. But when the reply is "tutor", the next question will usually be: "That's interesting, but what do you really do?" The sad truth is tutors are usually perceived as college students who help students do homework assignments and prepare for quizzes so they can pick up some extra income.
This is definitely not our view. We believe tutors are every bit as "professional" as doctors and teachers. As a matter of fact, one of our goals is helping tutors and tutoring services raise their professional standards and getting the public to perceive tutors as professionals worthy of respect.
While achieving this goal nationwide may be a long way off, it is a reality as far our tutors are concerned. If you become one of our teachers, you will find we'll always treat you as a professional, expect you to act professionally in your dealings with students, parents and us and help set things straight if you inadvertently act in an unprofessional manner.
It's possible you've been fooled by "bait and switch" advertising. As a result, you've gone to some store hoping for a good buy only to find the desired item "sold out" or a salesman who tried to sell you a "better" (i.e., more expensive) item.
You may have encountered a company which practices the same "bait and switch" tactics in its employment practices. You receive all sorts of assurances and promises but, once you've signed up, everything changes. If you received a paycheck for less than you expected, you might be told: "Oh, you misunderstood. We didn't promise to pay you that much." If you didn't receive your paycheck, you might have been told: "It's in the mail." each time you called to complain and ended up receiving it a month or two later than promised.
Well, that's not the way we operate. If you become one of our tutors, you'll quickly learn we're always guided by the highest possible standards of integrity and honesty in our dealings with parents, with students and with tutors. For instance, we're scrupulous about keeping all promises we make to clients and to teachers. (And we hold our teachers to these same high standards of integrity and honesty in their dealing with clients and with us.) In fact, one of the articles we require you to read is Important Procedures which is a summary of all procedures, policies, paperwork requirements and deadline dates that you as one of our tutors must agree to follow We insist you know them thoroughly before returning your application so you'll know exactly what's involved in teaching our students and you'll have no surprises with respect to any aspect of our tutoring service.
As one of our teachers, you'd be classified as an independent contractor, not as a salaried employee. Since nothing is withheld for Federal, State, City, Social Security and other taxes, you'll always have your full earnings each month. Our only requirement is issuing a 1099 form in January to report your previous year's earnings.
Since the government regards independent contractors as businesses and not salary earners, you can deduct all expenses you incurred in giving, going to and preparing for lessons. As such, you have the right to deduct many expenses you couldn't as a salaried employee.
We require you to read Reducing Taxes for strategies of how to easily and legally use the tax laws to earn more money as one of our teachers and yet pay less in taxes. Since you'll probably be as amazed when you read it as we were when we wrote it, we suggest you read this article very carefully, several times if necessary, with a calculator in hand. Why? Because the math conclusively demonstrates: 1) earning $10,000 as a tutor can reduce (not increase) your taxable income by $1,000 and 2) an independent contractor earning $20.00 an hour does as well as a salaried employee earning $50.00 an hour.
As you can easily see, you'd do well financially as one of our teachers.
Our tutors enjoy very good working conditions. In fact, you always retain the freedom to choose when, where and how much you wish to teach.
Since we always leave making and changing all appointments up to the teacher and family to work out, you'll always be able to choose the days and times you wish to teach.
Since the application directs you to specify all locations in which you're willing to give lessons, you decide where you wish to teach. We'll subsequently assign you only students who live in the locations you specified. (However, once you've made your choices, we'll then regard them as a commitment on your part and hold you to them.)
Since you can always request to be placed on our inactive list when you have no more time for additional students, you choose how many hours you wish to teach. not bother you with any more new student assignments. When you again have time to take on new students, you can always request to be placed back on our active list.
Here are some interesting messages and unusual offers you might find enjoyable to investigate. Please click on any of the following banners if you feel like learning more:
| Interesting Sites | ||
