Dear Abby

Problem:  Should I start private tutoring?

VOICE ONE: Absolutely!  You love working with kids.  Evidence is how your voice changed when you met with two students on Zoom for a practice lesson last year.  Children learning gives you a high.  I’ve seen and heard it.

VOICE TWO: What would your husband think?  Tutoring might limit your freedom, and you like to do what you want when you want.  Your husband also likes to do what he wants when he wants.  Would the two of you be able to head to Port Aransas on a whim?

VOICE ONE: If you tutor, you’d want to do it virtually, but is that fair to students and parents? Now if you did do virtual tutoring, you would have to use Pioneer Valley’s Digital Reader, and this program’s efficacy did show improvement in reading when used.  On the other hand, the gains were not statistically significant.  Virtual learning isn’t ideal.  Would you be able to provide the necessary feedback to move students forward?  Would the child be motivated in this format?  Parents would really have to buy into this model for it to work.

VOICE TWO: You are a slow worker because of your turtlelike or labored processing speed.  You’d be spending all your time and retirement on lessons, trying to get them perfect, ignoring your spouse, and he’s part of your retirement too, you know.

VOICE ONE: Because you’d be teaching virtually, going to Port Aransas on a whim would not affect anything.  You could continue to tutor down there.  Just bring your laptop and teaching materials.

VOICE TWO: Yea, and you’d have to buy some of those materials since you left all your teaching stuff in the classroom when you retired.

VOICE ONE: Ooh!  How motivating!  You’d have new materials.  A new whiteboard, new magnetic letters that matched, new markers…

VOICE TWO: This is true, and tutoring would be easy because again you’d be using Pioneer Valley’s materials.  Wow! You’d have access to all leveled readers for only $20 per year, and students could also have access to digital readers by paying $10 per year.  Maybe you could charge a materials fee in addition to your hourly rate, which would ensure that students had magnetic letters, a writing notebook, and an electronic reader.

VOICE ONE: How would you go about getting clients?  Is it rude to contact former reading specialists with an email address and other contact information?  What about asking your former school district’s Director of Elementary Intervention if it would be possible to add retired reading specialists to the tutoring list?

VOICE TWO: Better make a move on it if tutoring is something you want to do.  You really  should have made contacts right before you retired like I told you to do.

VOICE ONE: It’s possible to tutor, but are you ready?  Do you really know? Maybe a letter to Dear Abby would help.