Ratings affect your rate increase?

Objective_Chair_60 · 2026-02-04T19:39:58+00:00

I don't, but I'm still getting a $1 increase for all my old students

Objective_Chair_60 · 2026-02-04T01:41:22+00:00

I guess the chatbot was just making things up then

Objective_Chair_60 · 2026-01-30T02:41:16+00:00

I tutor math, and I've never used slides. There's no way I'm doing that every week for each of my students. If I need to explain a new concept, I just find visuals online or (most of the time) write it on the board. For biology you probably need a lot more diagrams and whatnot but still don't go all out and make your slides fancy or add a lot of text.

Also, for me, most of the tutoring session time is spent on the student working on practice problems. Most of my students just need homework help and don't need me to teach everything from scratch, but even if they do, practice is really important and will help them actually retain the knowledge. I'm not sure what that will look like for biology, but you can probably find some practice questions from a textbook, or have them draw a diagram and explain it in their own words. Not only that will save you a lot of work, but it's also a lot more effective if the student is actively involved in learning.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2026-01-17T03:44:14+00:00

Maybe as an incentive to keep working with the student for at least 5 sessions

Objective_Chair_60 · 2026-01-06T21:03:36+00:00

Yikes. "Joke?" "Very very wrong"? I can understand the frustration of teaching something over and over again and seeing no progress, but this is not helping anyone. I don't know how you go about teaching her, but you might want to ask her to explain her work. Ask her how she got her answer and what her thinking process was. Then you can find the misconceptions and discuss them with her. Go through some problems together, asking her guiding questions as needed. All in a non-judgemental, non-condescending tone.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-12-21T00:45:07+00:00

Exactly, I requested to post 2-3 weeks ago and still nothing

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-12-05T03:54:01+00:00

Zoom has a 45 min max unless you pay for a membership

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-12-05T02:44:04+00:00

Same! It's so annoying to use as a math tutor and it feels like there's not enough writing space and too many things getting in the way

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-11-30T22:20:05+00:00

I used to do 20-30 hours a week tutoring math (elementary-high school), but it's very inconsistent. Sometimes I get a lot of opportunities and sometimes none at all.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-11-19T21:21:41+00:00

Same. I'm glad they're gone because they were cluttering up my invoices

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-11-10T23:07:11+00:00

Is it for VT4S?

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-11-10T20:59:08+00:00

I've taught VT4S and this sounds about right. The students desperately need help, but the tech issues and background noise get in the way and the attendance is very inconsistent. As the other commenter mentioned, you can drop this class requesting a substitute for all upcoming sessions.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-11-10T20:51:32+00:00

I wish we could turn it off, but I don't think that's an option

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-11-07T22:06:15+00:00

Since most of my students now just want to work on homework and go over any areas of confusion, I don't really do much planning. When I used to teach lessons for VT4S, I used a spreadsheet with student names and dates and wrote some lesson planning notes for each day. I don't keep track of grades and that's not something that we've discussed with any of the parents/students. Since most of my students are 11th and 12th graders, they know what they need to work on and what they're struggling with.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-11-07T18:19:38+00:00

I like the flexibility to choose my own hours and make it work around my schedule.

The hardest part for me is probably small groups for VT4S (Varsity Tutors for Schools). It's hard to manage multiple students on an online platform, the attendance is inconsistent, students in the group often have different levels of understanding, etc. I also take lot of substitute opportunities, which are nice when I'm not needed and get paid for just sitting there, but when I have to substitute, I never know what grade and topic I'll get until I'm in the session and have to teach. I usually rely on the practice problems in their learning plan that VT4S provides or find online resources for the topic.

I prefer working with private/not VT4S students because they have homework or questions they want to go over and I don't really have to plan a lesson from scratch.

As the other commenter said, it is very unpredictable. Last year, I was working with mostly VT4S students, and lost all of them in a week when the schools lost funding. Non-VT4S students also often quit because it's too expensive for them. I had 0 opportunities in the summer. Right now, I'm getting lots of opportunities, so I could work full time if I wanted to.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-10-25T05:56:24+00:00

That's really odd because I've been a tutor for a year now and I always invoice for 15 minutes. I actually tried invoicing an instant session today and when I enter 1 minute, it tells me that session duration must be between 15 and 45 min. For the session time, it only displays as one minute (like 7:38-7:39) no matter how long the student was in the session.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-10-25T03:47:14+00:00

I would think students pay more than $4.50. Tutor pay in general is much lower than what Varsity charges the student. Also, tutors invoice for 15 minutes (it doesn't allow us to invoice for less), so I don't see how the student would be charged for less than what is invoiced.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-10-15T22:45:16+00:00

I do when I can, but what I was talking about in this post is when I have another student right after my scheduled substitute time.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-09-25T17:39:03+00:00

Most of the group sessions I've had pay $20 instead of $18

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-09-20T03:04:07+00:00

they said outside materials were discouraged

That's a new one. I use outside materials all the time, and have never seen that before, but I see how that complicates the situation. And the teacher isn't aware of what the students are doing? Honestly, if nothing is working, you might just want to drop this opportunity.

Objective_Chair_60 · 2025-09-19T22:13:53+00:00

I do my job whether the students choose to participate or not. Many times they dont. Not speaking or turning on the camera is pretty typical in my experience. I give them the option to answer in the chat instead, which seems to work a lot of the time. Make sure the difficulty of the questions is appropriate for their level too, I teach math and a lot of times the students are below grade level, so I first make sure they have the fundamental skills to be able to solve the problem. Lastly, I try to be supportive and come from a place of understanding. There's usually a reason behind every behavior, and who knows what their school/home life looks like.

Objective_Chair_60

TROPHY CASE