Avoiding Common Issues

Putting Off Bad News

Very often parents have expectations of their children that we’re not able to help them meet.  Whenever you sense ‘trouble’, that is, whenever you sense that whatever expectations parents have are not going to be met (i.e. the student is going to fail the math class, the student is not going to get the score they want in SHSAT, etc.), make sure to communicate and set reasonable expectations with parents as quickly as possible.

• If students are not making real progress, let the parents know.
• If students are not showing up to your sessions, or are late, let the parents know.
• If students are not engaged in their sessions, or making it hard for you to teach them, let the parents know.
• If students are not doing their homework, let the parents know.

Basically, if there are any kind of issues at all, let the parents know as quickly as possible.

Many tutors feel reluctant to communicate about their student’s short-comings, misdeeds, or their bad behavior, but, ultimately, the parents will be unhappy with you (and us!) when they invest thousands of dollars into their child’s education and in return get no (or minimal) results.

Some parents don’t want to hear this feedback but it is still better to tell them sooner and avoid trouble for yourself and us later.

Working with Difficult Clients

Although most of our clients are reasonable every now and then you end up working with students or families with whom you just don’t mesh. This is a normal part of tutoring and we will not ask you to suffer with families that make you miserable.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, please let us know and we’ll find a way to gracefully extricate you from the job.

It’s very important that you enjoy your work and that your limited energy goes to the families that you like and in turn like working with you.

You may be tempted to ‘tough it out’ or ‘push through’, but this rarely works out and tends to create resentment and bitterness towards your work, your students, and the families you work with taking away energy from students you do like working with. (This is also a free tip for life. You’re welcome.)

There are always more clients so focus your energy on the clients with whom you work well because those are the people you’re most likely to be able to help in the long run.

Relying on Students for Session Scheduling

Although you spend most of the time with students, please don’t forget that the actual clients and people that are paying the bills are the parents. Sometimes students don’t understand that your time costs their parents money and they’ll schedule or cancel sessions without letting the parents know.

Scheduling tutoring sessions directly with students might seem convenient at the beginning but can blow up once the parents realize that their kids are cancelling sessions that they have to pay for.

If a student schedules or cancels a session make sure you communicate with their parents, especially about any last minute cancellations. Sometimes students simply don’t know that it’s not okay to cancel a session at the last minute and that their parents are going to be billed for it.

Supplying Study Materials

It is not your responsibility to buy supplies for students. You may choose to do so if you want to (especially if you are planning on using the material later for different students), but since you are an independent contractor, BMT cannot reimburse you for these supplies.

If you need students to buy a certain book or other supplies one of the easiest ways to do this is to send parents a link to where they can buy said supplies.