How To Become a Tutor and Earn Extra Money:

If you are wondering how to become a tutor, keep reading and I will do my best to give you the information you need.

Tutoring is one of the fastest growing home-based businesses that you can find. There are many options available to you, including working as a private tutor, tutoring online for an online tutoring agency, tutoring locally for a tutoring center, or tutoring students who are taking classes by distance learning or correspondence.

Setting up a tutoring business, in which you have a group of tutors working for you, is also an option you should consider. Many skilled and experienced people are looking for online tutoring jobs or local tutoring positions. If you are interested in running your own little-or big- business, this may be the choice for you.

First you will need to decide...do you want to tutor online? If you do, the whole world is your marketplace. Do you want to tutor in person only? This is very satisfying and rewarding, and there is great demand for local tutors who can meet in person with their students for tutoring instruction.

Next, you will need to decide...how will you do your marketing for your tutoring business? You can put up signs locally where accepted. You can advertise online, you can ask your friends to spread the word. For the 25 years I have been tutoring, I have used only word of mouth advertising and I have more students than I can possibly take on for tutoring.

How much will you charge? What hours will you work? How much tutoring will you do in a week? Where will you do the tutoring? Are you knowledgeable about tutoring regulations in your country?

Once you have answered all these questions, it is time to proceed with your plan. Get some students, and start sharing your skills. You will be helping someone else and making good money at the same time.

This blog contains much useful information for your tutoring business. Good luck! And please leave comments if you desire.




How to Become a Tutor: Teaching Methods

How to Become A Tutor: Teaching Methods
As a tutor, you will want to have a "portfolio" of different teaching methods. One teaching method that I will cover today is the Learning Through Teaching method. In this method, you ask your student to teach you the concept, as if he is the teacher and you are the student. You tell him that you are going to pretend you know nothing about this concept.

Give the student a few minutes to go over the concept that he is having difficulty with. Most students will make an attempt to play this role-reversal game.

This technique works very well, actually. You may have to help the student along a little the first time he tries it, but persevere. It's worth it.

As the student tries to explain the concept, it gets him talking out loud about it. It helps you clearly see what he does understand and what he doesn't. As he continues, look for areas he is missing, and ask him questions in those areas. Remember that since you're the student right now, it is normal for you to have questions about what he is teaching you. (You're tutoring him without him knowing it because your questions spur him to learn more.)

Part of the "game" is that he is free to use his books to look up answers to questions you are asking.

Treat your student with respect in this exercise and compliment him often. Remember to try to be the student even in your compliments, so you might say something like, "I really liked how you taught me that part. I was able to understand what you were saying."

How to Become a Tutor: Investing Time

How to Become a Tutor: How it All Started
You have probably noticed that several of my posts have been about building relationships. Yes, it is a very important thing to do. There is a really good reason for building relationships when you become a tutor. You see, your students and their parents are your best advertisers. So even if you are so successful at tutoring a child that the child reaches a point where he no longer needs you, the child could have other siblings who will. Also, parents have a way of bragging about how great their child's tutor is!

My career basically started with one family. The mom was talking about her child struggling in high school physics and I said that I did tutoring. She hired me right away, and I ended up tutoring all her children younger than that particular student, over the course of 10-12 years. He was oldest of 8 children. Not only that, but at least 2 dozen references to other families came from that same mom. Don't underestimate the power of 1 good relationship!

Become a Good Tutor: Investing some time

When you have established a client who will be coming on a regular basis, consider becoming involved with the student in an area of their interest which takes place outside of tutoring time. This involvement of time on your part is an investment in the relationship. It is a building up of trust.

For example, one of my students was an avid baseball player, but was struggling in math. He set up 2 weekly tutoring sessions with me on a regular basis. He was coming to see me Tuesdays 8-9 as well as Friday afternoons 1:30-3:00. He was quite an amiable young man, and had a great interest in playing baseball.

I invested in the tutoring relationship by attending a couple of his baseball games. The first game I attended was about 1 month after he had started coming to see me. By that time, I had gotten the chance to get to know him- by listening and by asking the right questions- and he had been telling me how his season was going. When I expressed an interest in coming to see a game, he was very pleasantly surprised and made sure I knew where and when the game was to be.

I not only enjoyed the game, I built a relationship. He could see that I genuinely had an interest in him and his success, not only in math but in things he was interested in. It makes people feel good when someone is interested in them. It also gives him the message that tutoring isn't just for me making money. And its true. Money is a nice side-effect of tutoring but the real rewards come from seeing growth in the student.

How to Become a Tutor: Work for Yourself or Someone Else?

How to Become a Tutor: Work for Yourself or Someone Else?

When preparing to be a tutor, you will be choosing whether to work for yourself or someone else.

I spent 25 years as a private tutor, self-employed. I loved it because I could choose my own hours, my own clients, and the flexibility worked very well for me. I did most of my tutoring at my own home. When my children were very young, I would put them to bed and then do a couple hours of tutoring.

This schedule also worked well for my students. I would see one student at 7-8pm and another at 8-9pm. I also had one student who came over Saturday morning, when my hubby could watch the kids, from 10-11am.

When the kids got older, I would sometimes tutor from 4:30-5:30pm. I would have a snack ready for the kids after school, and then send them downstairs to play games or watch tv for that hour. I would have put supper in the crockpot early in the day so it would be ready when my student left, or I would have something in the fridge ready to warm up.

I had all the students I could accommodate and more. I often had more students request tutoring than I could handle. I never once spent a penny on advertising. It was all done by word of mouth.

Maybe working for yourself is not a viable option for you. If you cannot seem to get your first clients or word of mouth is not getting you enough clients, then consider where in your local area you could get hired as a tutor. If you're good at crafts, check out craft stores and see if they run classes- or would consider running classes that you could teach. If you want to tutor high school subjects, go to the high schools in your area and see what they have for programs. You could advertise at universities and colleges as well.

Also, check out local tutoring services and see if they're hiring.

How to Become a Tutor and Build Good Relationships

Become a Tutor and Build Good Relationships
When you are a tutor, trying to build up a clientele, you are going to want to be the kind of person that relates well to other people, someone that your students feel they can relate to, and a tutor that can relate very well to the parents of their students.

Have you ever read the book,

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie?

If you haven't, you should. This book is amazing and will provide you with a great knowledge foundation for relationship building. This book points out several important things you can practice doing in your communications with others.

Here are two things you can start working on today:

1) Say the person's first name in your conversations. Yes, it sounds really simple, but the truth of the matter is that people love to hear their name. It makes them feel like you really care about them. It also helps them pay closer attention to what you are saying. (Remember when your mother would scold you by shouting all your names in full? Like Richard Scott Andrew Harmen! You come here right now! Or maybe Shauna Elizabeth Nancy Leeman! You're in trouble now! Well, it's no fun to remember getting scolded but the example shows how you really pay attention when you hear your name)

Just remember to use the student's first name only, and not in a scolding tone (wink).

2) Find out things about your student. What does he like to do? What are his hobbies? What sports does he like? Where has he gone on vacation? Then, you can bring little tidbits into conversations with him that he can really relate to. If he likes baseball, ask him what he thought about the most recent game. You will want to do a few minutes homework ahead of time about that game so you can comment on it too.

These two things, saying the person's name in conversation, and talking about something that interests them, are two simple yet very easy things to do. These two things will help you build relationships with your students as well as with other people in your life!

How to Become a Tutor: Building a Relationship

Become a Tutor: Building a Relationship

Learn What to Ask

When building a relationship with a new student, it can be difficult at first to know how many questions to ask and what to ask to get to know him better. After you become a tutor and have had some practice in this area, it will come easier to you.

With teenagers, generally, I would suggest treading carefully in this area at first. While I have never had a teenage student who didn't like to talk about themselves and their life, it usually came with time. (Let it ripen)

Elementary school children usually love to talk on and on about themselves and what they are doing, like to do, their friends, etc. Let this flow freely at first. However, you will need to take the reins and re-direct them to the tutoring task at hand, when necessary. Feel free to do so and they will learn to take cues from you.

I had one teenage student who was unusually quiet. In the tutoring session I could also tell that there were too many things on her mind to be able to concentrate on what I was teaching. A direct question like, "what's bothering you?" or "is there something you want to talk about?" will usually get the answer, "nothing." It will also leave a cold, dead silence in its wake and make both of you feel more uncomfortable.

It's better to ask a question such as, "so...what's your math teacher like?" or "I guess the basketball team is playing this friday. Do you usually go to the games?" After you get a response, ask another vague but related question. This exercise is just to get the student talking.

This is what I did with my quiet teenage student. After about 2 questions, she just spilled what was on her mind and then looked at me and said, "You know, you're really easy to talk to. I can't even talk to my parents like that." Well I must say that was one of the greatest compliments I had ever received as a tutor.

After she had spilled her problem out and told me what she thought she would do to solve it, I gave her one encouraging statement such as, "Well, I can tell you're a smart girl and I think you've done some good thinking about your situation. That's a great first step in solving any kind of a problem." She was not looking for a solution, only someone to unload on.

After that, she was able to soak in everything I was trying to teach her. The 10 minutes we took to have that conversation had several positive outcomes: 1) It built a relationship. I knew she trusted me. 2) It made the remaining 70 minutes of the lesson much more productive.

A student needs to feel comfortable enough to tell you when they don't understand the material. Building the trust relationship is the first step. Learn what questions to ask-- and when to ask.