Job Discussion Forums

[Jbhughes]

I've never really managed to understand how people make private students both profitable and worthwhile for the student(s) at the same time.

Here's how the maths works out to me:

Lessons in the language centre I work in:

-Student pays roughly $1.5 per hour.
-Student is in class with roughly 7-15 other students, this enables a wide range of different types of communication, although opportunities to converse directly with the teacher are low, especially anglophone teachers, whom the student gets taught by approximately 40% of the time.
-My pay $15/hour.
-My preparation time: 30 minutes - 2 hours, depending on whether I've taught the pages in the book or not etc. - this is for a 2hour lesson.
-My admin time: Basically nothing.

Therefore, for a 2 hour lesson:
My time Invested: 2.5-4 hours.
Pay: $30 minus taxes.
Student pays $3 or so.

Equates to between $7-11 per hour of my time.

Anticipated Private Lessons with myself:

-Student is alone with myself, or perhaps with another student with the same learning requirements and abilities etc.
-Student has far more opportunities for correction and communication with an anglophone teacher, although sts wouldn't be able to communicate in discussion groups or play team games. Peer learning wouldn't feature much either, obviously.
-My preparation time: Surely high? I anticipate designing bespoke courses based on the sts needs, previous learning experiences, strong/weak areas of language, r/w/s/l abilities etc etc. I would have to find suitable materials, possibly adapt them, design tasks, spend time after lessons evaluating what the student needs to work on and surely countless other time consuming activities I haven't thought of. 2-5 hours per 2hour lesson??
My admin time: Finding sts, coordinating lesson times and days, re-organising when they don't turn-up...

Assuming my guestimates are correct, for a 2 hour lesson:

Time invested 4-7hours.
Pay: $7-11 per hour of my invested time (the same as I get paid for normal lessons)
= 1 student pays $28-$77 per 2 hour lesson?!
2 sts pay $14-$38 per 2 hour lesson each?

Obviously, this is wrong. So which part(s) of my calculation are wrong? Surely the preparation time couldn't be the same as a normal class? Even assuming this - surely it wouldn't be worth it for 1 student to pay say $17-20 dollars for a 2 hour lesson when they can pay $3 for one in the language centre?

I'm sure there are teachers out there for which private teaching works for both parties - so, how?

[snollygoster]

I can only speak from my own experience.
To make privates work for you you MUST target only rich students whose parents are willing to pay for the privelege. They see it as a status symbol that their kid gets private lessons.
Personally, I have done this, and even way back in 2004 I charged rich parents $50 for a 45 minute lesson with their child. Discount to say $200 for 5 lessons booked at the same time.
You have to get money up front for a series of lessons, on a "no show-no refund" policy.
Those who say "Too expensive" just say "thanks for the interest" and Bye.
Prep is intense, and what I did was make Power points and I used the same ones over and over-but you need enough to offer a reasonably diverse range so you can take students of a wide variety of levels. I later used the same Power points to teach on line. In this way my original prep paid off long term. I'm still using the same ones today.

You also need good exercises etc to hand over as "homework". I used to get students to e-mail me their done homework. Give em heaps of homework, it makes the package look valuable. Plenty of web sites you can research yourself for this type of thing.

Good idea is to make a blog where you put links to free study material and give it out to who ever you think may be interested. I got, and still get, a lot of enquiry from mine.

For the face to face meeting, you need flashcard and other materials ready- You may be in a situation where you cant use your lap-top so hard copy stuff is esential. For higher level students, newspapers are a great resource.

When you get a "friend" who wants to join in classes, dont cut your rate in half for each, but make a concession- For example- $50 for one- $75 for 2.

Keep your prices high- It weeds out the ones who are not serious. Also, other private tutors will want to kill you if you offer "Language Mill" class prices. Privates are definateloy the top end of the market. They can be VERY profitable, but you have to be patient and sit out your price. When one takes you up, others will follow.

[Jbhughes]

That's a very detailed answer, Snollygoster, thank you.

The idea of tutoring kids is pretty daunting to be honest. Kids classes are not my forte if I'm honest and when they do go well it's usually based on them interacting as teams or as a group rather than individually.

Older teens and university age would be good though.

Food for thought, cheers.

EDIT: reread