By Janet Menosky Smith
Family vacations, summer camps, Monday holidays and Internet disruptions can all wreak havoc on our tutoring schedule. Today we offer just a few ideas on ways to handle each of these things.
In the previous blog post, I shared the structure I use for creating a monthly tuition-based tutoring model for year-round tutoring. Since I offer reading intervention tutoring for students with dyslexia, it makes sense to encourage families to keep tutoring regularly during the summer.
But sometimes families have vacation plans, summer camps and other activities packed into their schedules, and you may also have some extra times you want to take off.
One solution to maintain consistency, but add flexibility, is to offer a set number of sessions in a summer tutoring package.
For example: most summer vacations from school last about 2 ½ months or 10 weeks. If you allow for 1 week for a student vacation and 1 week for your vacation/time off, that would leave 8 weeks of instructional time. Multiply that by 2 times per week for a package of 16 sessions for XX total price.
You could add further consistency and flexibility by letting families know that if they are gone for a few weeks, they can do extra sessions in the weeks they are home. Many tutors use a scheduler such as the one in Tutor Bird or Zoom to allow their families to find open time slots and select their schedule. Let them know that they lose any sessions they don’t use.
If you like a more flexible summer schedule such as this, you can modify your tuition or per-hour structure to a school-year length, rather than a full year structure.
With the built-in time off in my yearly tuition set-up, it has worked for me to keep a year-round structure, but the summer package might be a good option for tutors who want more scheduling leeway.
Here are answers to a few more questions:
How do you handle all the Monday holidays that students scheduled for that day will miss, while other students never get the same holiday off?
When I have a Monday holiday scheduled as off, I will then also schedule a Tuesday after the holiday off for non-Monday students. I do make these days optional, so if a family still wants to meet, I will be there.
Also, I do use discretion in allowing some Monday holidays (such as Presidents Day) to be optional. I still work and families can choose whether or not to take one of their days off.
How do you handle last minute emergencies, such as the Internet not working?
If the Internet is down in my or my family’s area, then I will try to reschedule, so neither of us lose one of our days off. If the Internet issue is something the family needs to address, I usually allow one reschedule, but after that, each disruption will count as one of their days off.* For illness, I use my day off or have the family use one of their days. For most circumstances, a built-in day off is used but I always allow for consideration of the situation before offering a reschedule.
I hope this gives you some ideas on how to make your own summer tutoring plans!
Yours in Reaching & Teaching,
Janet
Family vacations, summer camps, Monday holidays and Internet disruptions can all wreak havoc on our tutoring schedule. Today we offer just a few ideas on ways to handle each of these things.
In the previous blog post, I shared the structure I use for creating a monthly tuition-based tutoring model for year-round tutoring. Since I offer reading intervention tutoring for students with dyslexia, it makes sense to encourage families to keep tutoring regularly during the summer.
But sometimes families have vacation plans, summer camps and other activities packed into their schedules, and you may also have some extra times you want to take off.
One solution to maintain consistency, but add flexibility, is to offer a set number of sessions in a summer tutoring package.
For example: most summer vacations from school last about 2 ½ months or 10 weeks. If you allow for 1 week for a student vacation and 1 week for your vacation/time off, that would leave 8 weeks of instructional time. Multiply that by 2 times per week for a package of 16 sessions for XX total price.
You could add further consistency and flexibility by letting families know that if they are gone for a few weeks, they can do extra sessions in the weeks they are home. Many tutors use a scheduler such as the one in Tutor Bird or Zoom to allow their families to find open time slots and select their schedule. Let them know that they lose any sessions they don’t use.
If you like a more flexible summer schedule such as this, you can modify your tuition or per-hour structure to a school-year length, rather than a full year structure.
With the built-in time off in my yearly tuition set-up, it has worked for me to keep a year-round structure, but the summer package might be a good option for tutors who want more scheduling leeway.
Here are answers to a few more questions:
How do you handle all the Monday holidays that students scheduled for that day will miss, while other students never get the same holiday off?
When I have a Monday holiday scheduled as off, I will then also schedule a Tuesday after the holiday off for non-Monday students. I do make these days optional, so if a family still wants to meet, I will be there.
Also, I do use discretion in allowing some Monday holidays (such as Presidents Day) to be optional. I still work and families can choose whether or not to take one of their days off.
How do you handle last minute emergencies, such as the Internet not working?
If the Internet is down in my or my family’s area, then I will try to reschedule, so neither of us lose one of our days off. If the Internet issue is something the family needs to address, I usually allow one reschedule, but after that, each disruption will count as one of their days off.* For illness, I use my day off or have the family use one of their days. For most circumstances, a built-in day off is used but I always allow for consideration of the situation before offering a reschedule.
I hope this gives you some ideas on how to make your own summer tutoring plans!
Yours in Reaching & Teaching,
Janet
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