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Indie Tutors Meetup – 23 September 2017 London

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The grassroots Indie tutors community in London is growing! Working for yourself as an independent tutor can be a lonely job and even if you put all your effort into providing the best possible service, it is always invaluable to know how others manage the teaching and business part of their tutoring.


Typically we discuss things like tutoring rates, how to get new work using The Tutor Pages or otherwise, websites, cancellation policies, the best agencies, and I am happy to offer my advice as a full time online tutor for those considering starting out in that market.

This is open to all tutors, independent or tutoring for an agency. The Larrik Pub is a well lit airy gasto pub which does snacks, food and drinks. Nearest tube Edgware Road, Marylebone or Baker Street.

Looking forward to meeting you and feel free to contact me if you want more info or to let me know you are coming 🙂

My first maths Conference #mathsconf10

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Cake, workshops, ideas from examination boards, new connections, free books and so much more. Here’s some thoughts on my first maths conference.

Maths and cake. A yummy combination.

Saturday morning on a London bus in Dagenham and all alone I was wondering if I am even supposed to be going to this conference as a private tutor. It was after all a classroom teachers’ event and I was feeling like a fish out of water on my way there. Luckily the active maths teaching community on twitter and teachers I know on the Maths Tutors UK Facebook group had encouraged me to go (with cake promised nonetheless). So I booked my ticket without knowing anyone else in person who was going. And what a superb decision that turned out to be!

I arrived into a huge hall of teachers and met someone I knew through the Facebook group, we had chatted before online so it was easy to get chatting in person. Even if I had known no one at all the maths conference had the perfect ice breaker with the “mathematical speed dating” later on. More on that in a bit.

Meeting up for the first time, the Maths Tutors UK gang.

The opening introductory talk was by Mark McCourt of La Salle education who organised this event. He mentioned that these conferences have only been going for 3 years, and are sponsored by AQA so they can be very cheap (my ticket was ÂŁ26.87 with VAT). The idea being that it is the teachers who know best how to tackle education in this country and this is a platform to bring everyone together. One big thing he said at the start stuck with me all day:

Education is UK’s 5th largest export.

I have first hand experience of this and my tutoring business is now part of that statistic. Last year I decided to tutor all online to cut out my commute and be able to reach my Yorkshire clients without the long train journeys. To my surprise I started getting enquiries from parents in the US, India, Singapore, Malaysia, UAE and Bahrain. Some were British families abroad sending their children to British schools but many others simply chose British schools. My clients have such respect for the British education system, they equate it to a certain level of sophistication and elegance that we often don’t realise it being here in the U.K., which is also a point Mark McCourt made. My dad worked in the Indian embassy and he persuaded his senior officers to have me entered me into Braeburn primary school in Nairobi, Kenya when I was 5 years old.

The mathematical speed dating was a 2 mins session with another teacher/educator in the room. On the date you had to discuss your favourite teaching ideas and there were 4 such dates. I learnt about a puzzles book a teacher has written, the Irish education system (a teacher had travelled from Ireland to be at that conference) and a teacher who had recently been to schools in China. I exchanged ideas on how I tutor online, Dyscalculia and my “meaning of pi” experiment. The teachers had such great enthusiasm for what they do and new things they wanted to learn and share. The speed dating got me socially relaxed and ready for a full day’s worth of workshops and socialising.

Lunch time at mathsconf10.

There were 5 workshops to choose from out of 22 that were running on the day. I wish I could have chosen all 22 so going down to just 5 was a tough choice.

My first workshop was run by the chief of examiners for the AQA board for A Level on mathematical proof and notation. I was truly surprised when he pulled out a SURD rationalising the denominator question. It could be legitimately all done by typing it on the calculator and hitting the answer button to score all the marks as it was not a “show that” question. There is an increased emphasis on the use of calculators for the new A Level AQA spec. Unless of course questions explicitly ask for “show that” type proof which requires full rigour of explaining. As it happens there was a discussion going on the use of calculators on the Maths Tutors UK group on the same day. In that moment I realised the value of being right in front of a chief examiner for a board to discuss this. This was coming straight from the horse’s mouth. And it was an open discussion too so if there was anywhere I could best learn about this or let my thoughts known to the board, this was the only place to be.

Concrete material to play with.

My second workshop was run on bar models for algebra and number work. This was Christmas to me as I’ve been tutoring Dyscalculia students for a year and I’m hungry for ideas on this. There were concrete materials like numicon, cubes, counters and strips of paper. I was amazed on how differently you can approach algebra in the earlier years before introducing it an abstract manner later on. This type of bridging material is exactly what I need for my Dyscalculia teenage students. I will be attending another workshop by the same speaker in London later in July again.

My third workshop was on a new qualification by AQA called Core maths. I had taken a punt on this one as I had no idea what this workshop was going to be. This turned out to be about a ton of real world maths, calculations on loans, taxes, inflation etc., Stuff that could be taught on the actual GCSE. The presenter showed a number of student responses on a task called “Why Santa Claus is not real?” with some creative calculations by students. This seems like a very useful practical maths qualification.

My fourth workshop was all about tech in the classroom and digital resources. An enigmatic retired teacher was totally down with the tech. He took us to Melbourne airport on Google maps and showed us that you can actually see cross-sectional views of the runway with gradient data. We traveled to the pentagon building as well. I was so happy to see him use the Wacom graphics tablet that I use in my own tutoring. He also had some very cool graphing software and some very clever uses of spreadsheets. His workshop alone has filled my head with numerous ideas and I’ll slowly be implementing these with my students.

My fifth and final workshop was about reasoning and problem solving. The teacher showed some innovative ideas on the correct use of language and the idea of problem solving through creative brainstorming and questioning. By applying those techniques she had improved the scores of her set of students very well. What a skill to be able to influence so many students so effectively. By my fifth workshop my brain was overloaded already and I took as much note as I could for teaching KS3 and KS4 material.

Free books. Thank you CGP 🙂

Between the five sessions there was lunch and the odd short break. The highlight of lunch has to be the cake competition with a whole array of wonderful maths themed cakes. I knew two teachers from the Facebook group so I had two large slices of their cakes. I was buzzing on sugar now too.

There were also several stands from suppliers and publishers. As if the day didn’t have enough value already, I then got hold of the brand new A Level maths textbooks from CGP for the new syllabus for free! The books are absolutely invaluable to me and I am one happy bunny now.

The day closed with Mark McCourt on the main stage again and some drinks outside. Working as a tutor can be a lonely affair and no matter how good you think you are doing with your tutoring it is impossible to shake that feeling off that you know you need CPD and could be doing a better job. After 11 years of tutoring, 9 of them without knowing any other tutors I was so relieved to have gotten CPD at this conference. I have attended short training courses before but this was truly on another scale and level. I met many teachers and exchanged ideas from my world of 1-on-1 work with their inspiring work in the classroom. As a tutor one can often feel in the periphery of the education system. I now truly feel connected to the heart of the teaching ecosystem.

It was an intense roller coaster of a day which went very fast and there was so much to absorb. I have returned with tons of goodies, subscriptions, contacts and I’m still processing many things from the day. I now genuinely feel like a better, more rounded tutor and am raring to try new ideas with my students. I’ve also got the maths conference bug, so I will be going to a few more of these now 🙂 I urge all my maths tutor friends to attend future events like these. Thank you La Salle.

Passing the apex of the tutoring year

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I seem to say this every year, and like last year this year is no exception. This is the busiest time of tuition all year round for me. I tutor consistently 7 days a week from about March. And I have finally passed the peak of the tuition demand period. This has given me some well needed rest and a little time for reflection before I jump into the next peak of the final Summer half tuition period.

Last Wednesday were the GCSE, iGCSE, Functional Skills maths exams all in one day. Preceded by Physics GCSE and A Level Core 2 on the Tuesday. I was also mentoring and preparing a student for another subject and that too ended on Thursday morning.

Atul Rana

Caught up with a couple of other tutor friends before the Easter holidays.

And that’s just tuition with my students. In the tutoring world I run the Maths Tutors UK Facebook group, along with a few other tutor networking projects where I hold a collaborative space for other tutors. I also organise real life meetups with tutors which are an excellent social space in an otherwise lonely profession. I am getting more and more involved with The Profs and BitPaper Whiteboard who have a great forward thinking and innovative team of tutors.

It has been a really inspiring and intense year so far. Online tuition has worked out like a charm and Dyscalculia tutoring has turned out to be one of the most satisfying things I have ever done. It is all rewarding work and the longer, warmer days in May make it perfect for doing these longer hours.

I post fairly regularly on my Facebook Page, so do join or follow me there. Or even my twitter account. And for all my friends who have been trying to get me out and about to socialise or to music gigs, I promise I will get out of being a hermit stage and catch up with you very soon 🙂

 

Easter tuition 2017 and the payoff to go all Online

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I have come out of the other side, the Easter tuition period is by far the busiest time of year for me. I first experiened this during the Easter holiday period of 2007, and some of the work I did at the time has led to work even to this very Easter holiday. Amazing how far and long word of mouth can go!

BitPaper Whiteboard Maths Tuition Atul Rana Tutors

Using BitPaper for online tutoring. I love this whiteboard!

Since then, I have gotten busier and busier at Easter. The Easter season is a really intense period of tuition for me, but also very rewarding. I am at my most present, focused and dedicated. I manage all my tuition, client feedback, enquries and admin. I tutor all 7 days a week, and while Sundays can be up to 3 or 4 hours a day, my other days are all more than 6 hours, typically 7 hours or more.

Last Summer I took the plunge and decided only to tutor online from now on. Inevitably I lost a small fraction of my in person clients as some of them were not keen to try out the new medium. But as planned the opening I made for new online clients paid off very well indeed. I had a slow start in September and October and panic somewhat set in at the time, as after all I was used to being booked solid pretty much all year round. But it has all worked out. This time all over the world, and now I can claim to be a truly global tutor. At Easter I tutored students in Singapore, Malaysia, India, Spain, UAE, Baharain and Canada. I tutored students going to British Schools abroad and somehow my own story of growing up in different countries and going to a British school in Kenya has resonated with my new clients and students.

Hanging out with my client’s horse. Dave is relaxed 🙂

There were days I finished tutoring and couldn’t believe how just with one click I can travel to a new country, a new world, different weather, time zone and accents. A slice of being in a different space and part of the world is now instantly available to me, and I feel I have transcended the limits of geography in many ways. I am fortuante to be in this position and my calculated gamble to go all online has well and truly paid off. There is no better valididation of that during the Easter tuition period. I’ve made gambles and trade offs like this before, and it takes a little time for the results to come through fully. I’ve certainly tutored more hours this Easter than ever, but the great thing is that it does not feel like it. With no commute, and from the comfort of my own home I’ve been a lot more relaxed this time of the year.

Despite the full move to online tuition, I have kept going to Yorkshire to see a couple of families to tutor. It was amazing to go there again, and although I have been tutoring 7 days a week flat out, including in Yorkshire, it was great to have a break away from London. I went for walks and had some great dinner time conversations with my clients. Easter is a great season to see tiny lambs running around and bleating, so it’s been great to reconnect with nature’s cycle. 2017 marks my 10th Year of going to one family in the Yorkshire Dales who are like my second home there. I go there in the Summer holidays to visit as well.

This is Charlie the Ram. Met him in Yorkshire as well 🙂

The ball is well and truly in motion for my continued move to online tuition, and next year things will get even better. Although I’m still tutoring every day in May, the hours are reduced now and I’ve had a refreshing break with friends and family. One last push for the busy exam period of May and June and then a nice Summer off, both for me and my students 🙂

Growth of Human Population Through Time

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Did you know that the world population took all of evolutionary time to reach the 1 billion mark at around the year 1800 and then between 1999 and 2011, we added another billion in just the space of 12 years? 12 years Vs all the time since the beginning of time, my head just hurts trying to even think about this! The world’s population has done some staggering things over the last 200 years, and it is hard to comprehend this with just looking at the raw numbers. A new video by the AMNH however clarifies this very well.

This latest video by The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)  is directly relevant at GCSE Biology (AQA B3 module “Humans and their environment”) and Geography. Besides that it is a superb demonstration in maths about linear Vs exponential growth. But even more than that the implications of populations growth are directly relevant to each and every one of us.

I can think of three very critical times that represent a major shift in the way humanity has changed.

  1. Spreading out of Africa 100,000 years ago and spreading across the rest of the world as hunter gatherers. Modern humans are believed to have evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago. After that it is believed that a very small number of hunter gatherers were able to start migrating out of the African continent. While there are different theories about the exact nature of this migration, there is very little scientific doubt left that all of humanity originates from Africa.
  2. Discovery of farming 10,000 BC approx. The discovery of agriculture is more recent in the big scheme of things. It is hard to imagine a world without agriculture now, or that we weren’t actually evolved to live in an agricultural society. Yet many of our social ideas have come about from agrarian societies, including the idea of currency and money. In his book Cialdini explains that reciprocity and exchange are evolutionary built in us. That idea of reciprocity when extended out in the context of land ownership in an agricultural society with grains as everlasting currency gave birth to the more tangible idea of wealth and money. Eventually being abstracted in the form of coins and bank notes.
  3. The Industrial Revolution mid 1700s. This totally changed everything again, and to date the population explosion can be explained by modern medicine, urbanisation and the industrial age. The start of the 1900s saw the start of the current population explosion. The discovery of antibiotics in 1928 well and truly added to this population growth. We beat the bugs, and there has been no stopping in our population growth since. But with antibiotic resistance on the rise we risk being taken back in time.

These numbers and facts are what current evidence by Science tell us. The good news is that fertility rates across the world are now decreasing and even now, the rate of population increase is going down. This means that the population won’t keep increasing forever and it will level off in 2100. An average estimate brings this figure to 11 billion in the year 2100. But there’s slight variation in this possible as projections cannot be 100% accurate.

The beautifully captioned video shows a simple graph of the population of the world increasing with time, and all the major historical events to go along the timeline to give us a point of reference. The music is what makes it though and is truly captivating. So enjoy the ride this video takes you on.

What are your thoughts on the population growth and what questions does this get you thinking of? Let me know below through comments.

Determining the Speed of Light – 340 Years Ago

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The Google doodle today shows a massive landmark in Science, the day we found the speed of light. This was done by Danish astronomer Ole Rømer in 1676. More recently Freddie Mercury would sing about travelling at the speed of light in the Queen song, Don’t Stop Me Now. He did have Brian May in the band who has a PhD in Astrophysics.

Going back to the serious business of light having a speed..How can light even have a speed? It is impossible to “see” light having a speed directly. Light just seems to instantaneously “be” everywhere as soon as the sun rises or a light switch is flicked on.

340 years ago, which is a long time ago now in the context of modern Physics, the Danish astronomer did work this out. His genius laid in the fact that he worked out a peculiar quirk in exactly when Jupiter’s moon Io popped into view through his telescope. It appeared to pop into view at different times at different times of the year. It shouldn’t have because celestial mechanics are very stable and steady indeed. He questioned the very assumption that light itself must be taking shorter or longer to get to the earth from Io. This is what the Google doodle shows today. Doing calculations with the speed of light are fairly standard at A Level Physics, but they also come up occasionally at GCSE Physics as well.

Professor Brian Cox explains this much better in his short video that I have linked below. So click away and learn about this big part of Scientific history.

10 Years of Private Tutoring

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I had a little smile when I read that quote from the tutoring agency handout, it was the very last thing on that handout and a conclusion to what tutoring had done for the founders of that agency. It read:

[The agency] has grown by developing goodwill with parents and pupils, and have a wide ranging network of parents and clients who cross the economic and political spectrum. And as such, tutoring can be remarkably useful for all sorts of serendipitous reasons. Tutoring has opened many a path to greater things which was hitherto closed.

For me the journey began on 9 November 2006 when I had my first ever 1-on-1 academic tuition student, marking my 10 year anniversary of being a tutor this year. I want to recall the story of my first student and also reflect on some of the amazing things that have happened in the last 10 years of tuition.

The Summer of 2006, a real tough one for me and my family. The unexpected death of my father in Nov 2005 was life changing and bought upon me big responsibilities. I had finished my PhD for over a year now, and was in debt. I was looking for Engineering jobs and anything else I could do with my academic background. That year I was a Specialist Graduate marker for the Edexcel board spending hours marking a couple of thousand GCSE exam scripts. It turns out that this experience was to come in invaluable as a tutor. But that job ended and I was soon in debt again. Around April 2006 I had applied to a tutoring agency that a friend of mine had recommended. Apparently one of my friend’s friend was making decent money from it. I had already done some 1-on-1 guitar tuition at university so somehow tutoring did appeal to me. I did an interview with the agency around June 2006 and never heard from them again. I was absolutely terrible with job applications anyway, and not hearing from employers was the norm for me. I never sold myself well enough or was confident at interviews for Engineering jobs or even part time work.

Yorkshire Dales

My favourite walk in the Yorkshire Dales.

After almost six months the agency phoned me up and asked if I could tutor AS Level maths to a student who had just started it. I took the job on, and of course the agency knew at that point that I had not tutored before. I phoned up the mother and explained that I hadn’t tutored before but I had previous bits of teaching experience and that I would look up the syllabus and prepare myself in detail.  For a 1 hour tuition session, I must have prepared for about 3 hours.

Tutoring at a small village in Hampshire and gone for a walk.

Tutoring at a small village in Hampshire and gone for a walk.

The first session was a breeze, I went to someone’s home for the first time to tutor which felt really nice, as I was a guest at someone’s home. The session went down well and my student was so stuck at the starting level that none of the hard stuff I looked up needed to be covered. I cleared up the basics with ease, and set a few questions as homework to consolidate learning. We only needed another 3 or 4 sessions after that, my student had cracked the topic and felt confident at tackling everything else on her own. I didn’t feel like there was any point continuing as I realised that the goal of tuition is to make yourself redundant as a tutor, and to make the student independent. Given that I was desperate for money at that time, this was a brave move. But the right move. The agency trusted me and by then I had 3 students already. I was beginning to earn enough money to pay my rent now. The previous 12 months were of family tragedies and debt, so my life was really on the upward finally. ÂŁ25/hr was the highest hourly rate I had ever earned in my life and this gave me a real sense of confidence. Plus I had the unbelievable satisfaction that I was making a difference to young people’s lives.

Enjoying the snow in Yorkshire with snow drifts and all. A tutoring trip with snow adventure!

Enjoying the snow in Yorkshire with snow drifts and all. A tutoring trip with snow adventure!

The rest is history really, the agency just kept giving me more and more jobs, and the first half of 2007 was incredible. I was making money, all on my own terms. No employer, no hassle and a great working environment, a nice friendly home. I was really beginning to enjoy my work, which never felt like work, and eventually this was to become my career. I was still after a full time job however and in October 2007, I started one. I had already started with some students earlier in the Summer so I decided to continue with them despite working full time. The agency also kept giving me new work, all in the evenings. My private client base kept growing and growing. Parents were paying me to come up to Yorkshire to tutor, and I stayed over in the stunning Yorkshire Dales. I felt more alive, valued and in control of my life when tutoring. The city job became dull, 9 hours a day crunching spreadsheets became soul crushing. 18 months later I took a pay cut and decided to tutor full time. It was June 2009 and a new and brave beginning for me. My entire livelihood now depended on tuition.

Tutoring maths by the beach :-)

Tutoring maths by the beach 🙂

Over the last 10 years I have lived in with numerous families in Yorkshire, Hampshire, and even as far as Scotland. I clocked up nearly 100 days away from home in 2012. I have tutored so many students who were either written off school or were just never predicted the right grade. All of them got the right grades and made a good life. Many of them are still in touch with me and I now visit them as a family friend.

The people I have met have really come from a huge range of social backgrounds, but irrespective of that, all of them have always had their children’s future and best interests in mind. I have learnt so much by living in with families, tutoring at schools, travelling to homes in London and now my chosen method of tutoring online tuition. I have earned more than I have ever done in my life, even when I had a full time job, and every year just gets better. I have learnt the intricacies of business, accounting, marketing, books, client relationships. I love every moment of it. The feeling of giving someone new knowledge and seeing new light in their eyes as they crack something they thought was impossible is what drives me. So here’s to another 10 years of tuition. I leave you with some of my favourite photos during the last 10 years of tuition.

Being Recognised as an Online Tutor

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I have been quoted in an online blog as being one of the best online tutors in the world, how exciting and what an honor for my ego!

One of the great things about being an online tutor is that you can meet other online tutors. And this is such a small niche group of tutors that word spreads fast! And tutors learn and network with each other fast as well. I totally owe it to a couple of tutors I got chatting to online who mentored and encouraged me to go more and more online. And thanks to them I am now fully online.

But then I found that doing this really odd thing i.e teaching online, that no one thinks is possible, starts making a few little ripples and the ripples then turn into waves.

I felt like giving back to the online community of tutors. and I have joined a really great community of tutors at Joanne Kaminski’s group Become an online tutor. And when they wanted some advice on me for tutors starting up on the online game, I realised I actually know a lot about online tuition!

My advice was very simple really. It is that if as a tutor you are worried or scared about the technology aspect of online tuition and you feel you can’t provide the same value online as you can in person, then the best thing to do is just train with other tutors. I have even helped one tutor make her first ever Skype call and chat to me on video. This is a great soft step in getting used to online tuition.

I am one of 10 tutors giving advice in that article, and there’s other superb pieces of advice on there from other excellent online tutors. Some other advice is to get videos, set up a payment system, getting your online folders organised and thinking about that all important ‘why am I doing this?’ question that drives and inspires you to tutor. So here it is then, read my part in:

World’s Best Online Tutors Offer 10 Pieces of Advice For Starting an Online Tutoring Business

Summer Tutoring Break – Rock, Airshow and BBQs

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Ah Summer bliss, the warm weather (most of the time), the many outdoor events and the opportunity to relax and take some time off. That I sure have done, and six weeks of that too by now. Except for a tiny bit of online tutoring I have had a great break. So what have I been doing with this time off?

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I am a man of rock, live rock ‘n roll. This year I went off to a rock and metal festival in Denmark called Copenhell. An old university friend lives in Copenhagen and we have been going to rock festivals for a good few years now. From the big names we saw Bruce Springsteen, Alice Cooper, The Scorpions, Sixx AM and Black Sabbath. I have been to Copenhagen two Summers in a row and it has really grown on me as a pretty city by the sea and full of canals.

Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath

The first half of 2016 took me by surprise with the huge growth of online tuition, and with no days off I lost track of a few friends. I have now made up for that and have been catching up with loads of great friends. They have forgiven me for me going incognito for a while, or so they tell me anyway 🙂

For the first time in my 10 years of tutoring I met tutors last year and have become good friends with some tutors. We socialise now and it’s great to have ‘work colleagues’ as friends, and being an independent tutor is no longer the lonely profession it used to be for me. I organised a tutor meetup at Hyde Park in July, the day was absolutely beautiful and we sat and chatted on the grass in the park. The tutor meetups have been a real success and I can see these growing even more over the coming months.

The A380 at Farnborough Air Show

The A380 at Farnborough Air Show

I have been keeping my Science brain busy in other ways, I went to the Royal Society exhibition, saw Professor Brian Cox give a live lecture, and the best one of all was a trip to the Farnborough Air Show. I got to know a tutor from Farnborough in December 2015 and she invited me to her housewarming BBQ weekend party. This was the perfect excuse for me to see the airshow as well. And what an airshow! I very highly recommend going to it, you see airplanes do some mind blowing things.

The growth of my tutoring business in 2016 has given me good income, and a nice buffer over the summer so in terms of earnings I don’t feel the same urgency to get tutoring again as I have done so in the past. I do like tutoring and can’t be kept off it for too long though. There are a few students who I feel need to be kept ticking over the Summer as they risk going into the new school year on a weak foundation, so I am keeping track of them and I will start tutoring them before they go to school.

Brian Cox Neutrino Lecture

Brian Cox Neutrino Lecture

And then there is my favourite county Yorkshire. This month I am going to Yorkshire both to tutor, and also visit a couple of other families purely to socialise and to be a tourist. These two families used to be clients of mine and since we have so many values and memories in common we have become parts of each others lives. It will be good to catch up with some of my earliest students from when I first started tutoring. They are in their mid twenties now so it will be nice to see how they are doing in life now.

The summer marches on and I stay true to my other love in life, making and performing music. I have been doing tons of that and am on stage solo and with my band over the summer. 2016 was another first to mix up tutoring with rock music and I invited parents and family to a gig of mine, same again for my next band gig.


The summer continues and as tutoring is such a big part of my life now, this year has been really awesome to get parts of tutoring involved in my personal life, from making new tutor friends, inviting families to my gigs and putting in some tourism mixed with tutoring. Love every minute of it.

My Busiest Ever Tutoring Season 2015-2016 Ends

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Today is my fifth full day off in all of 2016. I am still tired but slowly getting the well deserved rest that I have needed so I am putting down my thoughts as they swim around in my head now; Online tuition, tutor meet-ups, Science kits, expanding my tutoring age range, and Dyscalculia tuition. I have learnt and done a lot of new things this year.

Core 4 AQA online maths tuition

Teaching A Level maths online.

Yesterday the 2015-2016 season came to an end for me and the week before I was tutoring 7 to 8hrs daily. Except for 4 days, I was teaching every single day in 2016 until then, even if on some days it was just 2hrs. This final week felt like the grand finale of a great fireworks display that went with medium intensity throughout with the occasional intense burst, but then went full blast towards the end.

This week has seen me say goodbye to many long term students as they graduate into the next phase of their lives. All goodbyes are hard, but the homeschooling ones were particularly hard. With homeschooling I felt 100% responsible for their education in that subject and I was an integral part of student’s lives over the last two years, and conversely they and their families were a part of my life too.

Cuisenaire Rods

Tutoring a 7 year old with Dyscalculia using Cuisenaire rods. Another first for me this year.

I have been tutoring for 10 years now and am used to steady growth of my tuition, but 2015-2016 doubled the demand on my time within just one year, and I have been overwhelmed by the growth of online tuition. Nothing had prepared me for this level of demand on my time. I took on the challenge though and managed the logistical, business and teaching side of it. I simultaneously also started tutoring Dyscalculia to adults, started maths with children as young as 6 and got hold of Science kits for hands on demonstration and play. The growth of my online tuition meant I had more money to attend courses and buy more educational material. One area of growth spiraled other areas and it was a great cycle of self perpetuating growth.

Playing piano at a student home.

Playing piano at a student home.

I will reflect more on this but so many new things happened in my world of tuition this school year that I will always remember it as a pivotal turning point in my tutoring career. Online tuition meant a more online presence for me in general. This meant I actively seeked out other tutors, and starting organising tutor meet-ups in London. Another tutor started meet-ups in the Midlands and we joined forces. A dedicated community of passionate tutors started meeting each other both in real life and I even arranged a Google Hangouts of tutors. Small tutor networks joined up to be bigger ones, and this process is still continuing as I become part of US and international online tutor networks. So far we had all worked in isolation for years as face to face tutors, but in the last few months great minds have been collaborating and coming together.

Physics circuits for school

Electricity is way more fun to learn when playing with circuits.

I have met some incredible tutors over the last few months, both face to face and online. Every one truly dedicated and giving 100% to what they do. Communicating with other great tutors has stimulated and inspired me to no end. The future of teaching is being defined by a few renegade and maverick tutors out there who are working independently of any constraints, and it will be years before we see the educational reforms we are coming up with, before they are rolled out and accepted amongst mass education.

Back to teaching though, lighting up students’ minds with enthusiasm and making sense of what never made sense before is always a real joy to me, and I found my ‘work’ purpose in life when I found tutoring by accident. This is what kept me going through all these months non-stop. It wasn’t always healthy for me and next year I plan on having a better work life balance. Sometimes people would ask if I ever get bored of teaching, and I would just say:

“I get tired sometimes yes, but bored….never”.