Can you tell us a little bit about your job?
I manage the recruitment, screening, certification, and scheduling of tutors as well as all session quality control and tutor support for Tutor.com, an online tutoring company. To give you an idea of the scope of this work, we currently have just over 1800 tutors and we conducted well over 720,000 tutoring sessions during the past academic year. I have been working with Tutor.com for 6 years and in this capacity for 5 of those 6. I started my work life as a teacher and then worked in operations management for a variety of government agencies.
Do you work from home, or do you go to an office?
Since the vast majority of my work is conducted online and over the phone. I work from home.
Can you briefly describe your usual day?
I would to love to have a usual day! I have my school year “schedule” and my summer “schedule”. During the school year I am up at about 6:00 a.m., get my son up at about 6:45 a.m., get him dressed and fed and then drive him to school. I start working as soon as I get back from dropping him off which is 8:00 a.m.
What's the best thing about your job?
There are so many bests, it is hard to pick one! The very best thing about my job is the fact that I work with a team of tremendously dedicated, hard-working people who truly work as a team. Second best has to be the work we do for kids: We change kids lives; we give them hope and confidence in their abilities and we do that every single day of the week.
Most challenging thing about your job:
Our services are open seven days a week and my job is always there. It is very challenging to balance work, family, housework and... leisure? (What’s that?)
How does tutoring online work, exactly?
We offer a unique service. We provide live, on demand, online tutoring. We market this service to libraries and other institutions and also directly to families. Kids who are having difficulty with say an algebra problem, can log on any day of the week between 2:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. Eastern and meet online with a real tutor to get help with that problem or homework question. They communicate using a chat format and an interactive whiteboard that both the student and tutor use in real time so that the tutor knows where the student is struggling. They can send files back and forth and they can visit a website where they could review a diagram that clearly explains a concept. The interaction is always one-to-one and always anonymous. We offer the service to kids in grades 4 – 12 in all math subjects, all sciences, English, essay writing and social studies.
Do you have any tips for our readers about how to get teens to do their homework every night without standing over them?
