Are you an educator or a tutor, or are you just wondering how I run my tutoring business? I know most of my subscribers are students studying for the SAT and the ACT, but I also know there is a secret cadre of subscribers out there that actually are educators, and if that’s you, this video is for you. I’m going to talk about some of the things that I learned early on as a tutor. If you are looking to try to help students improve on the SAT or the ACT, these are the top five things I wish I knew when I started that would have made my tutoring career go much more smoothly and also would have helped me educate students better.
I’ve been coaching the SAT and the ACT for two decades, and I’ve helped coach students to perfect scores. I’ve designed an online course for the SAT and the ACT. Our SAT course right now also has a product for educators called Tutor Mode, but it’s not just for tutors. It’s for classroom teachers or anybody who’s trying to teach the digital SAT and wants it all in one tool where you can assign homework, our practice tests, or our practice questions. If you’re an educator, I recommend that you check it out at supertutortv.com/educators.
Diagnose the Issue First
The first thing that I wish I knew when I started test prep tutoring is to diagnose the issue first. When I first started test prep tutoring, I really didn’t totally know what I was doing. My friend and I were looking for a part-time job because we were all working in entertainment at the time, and they said the best one we could find was teaching SAT prep at this company. So that’s kind of how I got the idea of getting into SAT prep tutoring and ACT tutoring. I was doing it in addition to my full-time job, but I didn’t really know what I was doing in terms of prep. So what I would usually do is just buy a book, or the kid would buy a book, and then I would sit down next to them—because I was all in-person tutoring at that time—and we’d just go through the book. We’d start at the math, we’d go through the math, we’d start the reading, we’d go through the reading, and I would just walk the kid through the book. It’s not that that’s the worst way to tutor in any way, shape, or form, but I think as I’ve grown as a tutor, one of the things that I realized is that one, not every kid needs every chapter in every book that exists out there. And two, not every kid has the time to do everything. So in order to optimize, the great thing about private tutoring is you can really tailor your lesson exactly to the kid that’s in front of you. And that’s something that I didn’t do when I started out, and over time I learned to do.
What I always do with students is I start with a diagnostic, figure out what they are getting wrong, and see if I can categorize all of them. Then, I figure out how we can drill down the easiest pieces of that puzzle that they are having trouble with. If you’re missing boundaries on the SAT, we need to do a lot of boundaries questions and learn all of the rules of commas, semicolons, and dashes. The other thing that I’ll say is that, though I didn’t necessarily ever do this as my tutoring career has gone on, I’ve heard many stories of other tutors that people have worked with who basically only use practice tests. And they will just go through practice tests and sit with the kid, and they might not even give homework. They just go over practice tests with students. Not only does this burn the practice test, because that is the only way to legitimately test your student before test day to see how they’re doing. But I also find that when you go over that question every week when you have homework, you’re really drilling down what you need. So my mantra again: we figure out what you’re missing, and then we drill down everything you’re missing. Once we drill all that down, we go back and take another practice test and see where we’re at. What are you still missing? We figure out those areas, and we also creep in toward the more difficult material. So, in any case, diagnose the issue first, use tests as a diagnostic tool, and personalize your lessons. You’re going to find that your students can perform much more efficiently because you focused on what they needed to work on specifically.
The Biggest Brands Don’t Always Have the Best Materials
Number two: the biggest brands don’t always have the best materials. And I say this with a caveat, because I realize I am someone who creates materials saying this, but I said this even before I created any materials. I’ve just found that the bigger the brand, it doesn’t always get into the best solutions, the best strategies, and even the best questions. I probably lean toward books by independent tutors, and we live in a world where people can directly publish on Kindle really easily. So there’s lots of smart, amazing tutors out there who’ve done that, and don’t brush them away just because they don’t have a big brand in front of their name. Check out what’s out there and find great material.
And the other thing, of course, is real material. Nothing beats real material, but just please don’t burn tests by sitting with students and going through them. With the College Board, there’s a question bank. If you’re working on the SAT or ACT, there are plenty of old tests sort of floating around in the multiverse. I don’t know where they all are because ACT has been cracking down on the copyright issues involved with those because they were test information releases that some students paid for. So I don’t know where that’s at at this point. It gets a little bit more dodgy from a copyright perspective, but all the real material you can get is great. See what you can find.
Pretend You’re the Client
Number three is that if you’re looking for more work, pretend you’re the client. One of the things that I did when I tripled my income in about two years was pretend that I was the client. I got on Google, and I pretended I was looking for a tutor like me. And I started typing things in and typing in searches, and I found a lot of stuff that was really helpful. I found some websites where I could get listed if I paid $50 or if I made a profile and did whatever. And so I got myself on those websites. I found review sites and Facebook groups. Type in exactly who you are, what you would be, or what somebody looking for you would type in, and see what comes up, and try to get yourself on those pages as much as possible. Think like a client, and you’re going to have more ideas on where you can market yourself and how you can better market yourself.
How to Manage Rates
Number four is how to manage rates. When I started off, I always thought money was so awkward, and money is awkward. Money is just a really awkward conversation. But I will say I’ve learned a couple of things. One, once your rate gets to a point that you’re sort of mid-career or you’re on target in terms of rate and you’re not at the bottom of the market, I find that a lot of parents are new to the whole tutoring world and they have no idea what to expect in terms of budget. They assume that if you’re some girl on YouTube talking about tutoring, you’re going to be 20 bucks an hour, or the same cost as their babysitter. And so I wasted a lot of time on phone calls earlier in my career when I didn’t publish my rate. But over time, I’ve learned that publishing rates or at least giving some ballpark figures of some sort can help families understand whether you’re in their budget or not and save time.
The second thing that I’ll say is that once you have a waiting list, you probably need to raise your rate. I always felt really weird about raising rates, and it was an awkward conversation. But most of the time with clients, I try to give people advanced warning. I try not to raise a rate before a benchmark. So if a student has an SAT coming up, I try not to raise the rate. I’ll grandfather rates until they get to their test or their deadline. But then if they come back to me a year later with a sibling and I’ve raised my rates, I’ll tell them that here’s where I’m at; do you want to work with me or not? And then even with some families where we’ve done ongoing tutoring or subject tutoring, I give them a month’s notice and I tell them they’ve been on a grandfathered rate for X months or for a year or whatever it is, and my current students are paying this. I tell them that it’s getting to a point where I can give them a little bit of discount off of that, but I can’t keep tutoring their kids at this rate. It just doesn’t make sense for me business-wise right now, so I totally understand if this is out of their range, but you’ve got to be ready to walk away.
And I’ve found that most of my students come along with me. And occasionally, yeah, I had one or two that couldn’t afford it or they’re looking for someone who’s less expensive, and it is what it is. But if you have a waiting list, it’s time to raise your rate. And that’s just how it goes. It’s also okay to drop your rate again. Things are seasonal. And that’s okay. I offer deals, and I offer better package rates if you come to me in February than if you come to me the last week of October.
Get a Pen Tablet and Good PDF Reader App
Number five is to get a pen tablet and a good PDF reader app. I use Notability. I bought it for 10 bucks when it used to be sold stand-alone. Now, I think they’re charging 10 or 20 bucks a month, and I think their pricing is kind of ridiculous. I’m sure there’s something else out there that’s similar to Notability. It’s this PDF app, and you can write on it. It has good handwriting estimation, so you need to find some kind of app like that. There’s plenty out there at this point.
And also get a pen tablet. I use a Wacom tablet. The specific model I use is discontinued, but this is the updated version: https://amzn.to/4hIxQ8J (This is an affiliate link; your purchase helps support our free content!). There is also a less expensive Wacom option: https://amzn.to/3Zfjk1j (also an affiliate link!).
But you can even get cheap tablets from Amazon that are around 30 bucks, which are probably good too. But yeah, get a pen tablet and get a good PDF app. I used to use a whiteboard, and I would hold it up to the camera, or I got a second camera, and I was flipping between the cameras, and it was just a mess. And then I also tried an iPad, where I would invite the iPad and my computer to the call. But then you got two calls going on, and it’s too complicated. If you have a Pen tablet and a good PDF app, then you can screen share. You can be in Zoom, Google Meets, or Skype. You can be anywhere, and it always works. I know Zoom also has that write-on, but what if Zoom goes down and you need to jump over to Google Meets because you had a connection problem? Get that technology piece in place, and you’re going to be good.
I hope you guys enjoyed this blog! If you are an educator, a tutor, or you want to run group classes online, we have the tool for you. You can assign homework. You can create custom quizzes. You can see at a glance an entire class worth of students and their Blue Book results. Hope this was helpful!
