Here is our Tutor blog, where you can read up on other tutors' anecdotes, experience and advice. If you're interested in joining our group of tutor blog writers then please email Beth Farrell. Enjoy reading!
When you’re sitting across from your tutees, trying to help them get that C grade, or a level 5 in their SATS, or even just improving their overall reading ability or their times-tables, you can really start to feel the pressure of helping them attain the best grades possible.Read more
I feel that I am an experienced tutor. I’ve worked in schools from Salford to Ashton, Moss Side to Hyde, from 10 year old boys to 19 year old girls, from groups of pupils to 1:1 tuition, from kids who love English to kids who despise it with every fibre of their being. And yet still, there is a prospect that makes every bone in my body quiver with sheer terror, makes me question my very existence, my own physical presence on this football we call planet earth…Read more
For those who are avid followers of this blog (you are out there… aren’t you?) you will know that I delivered my first tuition session on February 27th, and so by now I have been tutoring for just over a year. Whilst I love my job, there comes a point when, as a tutor you can become jaded; worn by the hours of tutoring, the lengthy journeys to Tameside or Salford, the planning and regurgitating of multiple lesson plans.Read more
I have been an English tutor for about a year and a half now, I have worked in nearly twenty schools and with dozens of pupils, all of varying ability, confidence and temperament. The joys and difficulties of working with all of them though, were always similar. For a variety of reasons, English is not always the easiest of subjects to tutor.Read more
Ah January. What a cruel mistress she can be. After the sweet heaven of being back at home for Christmas, what with the central heating, the food and a real life tumble dryer, it can feel pretty grim slogging back up North to the cold realities of Uni life, and once again having to work for a living. But as I set out my clothes for tutoring the next day (I of course do not do this, as I am not a child, but I think it adds nicely to the narrative) I ponder the thoughts of a new year and tutoring.Read more
It can be so easy to complain in life; the weather, Uni work, the state of one’s house plants. This extends to working as a tutor. There are some things that can be so easy to complain about when it comes to working as a tutor in Manchester: marking, tuition planning, and those blasted Stagecoach buses. But then you have those sessions where you’re reminded of the fact that actually, this job is pretty damn great.Read more
“Turn left and then your destination is on your right.” Google maps bellowed at me like a monotone symphony from my coat pocket. I looked up to a frightful sight, A monster!Read more
The aura of power that radiates from the reception area of a secondary school in Manchester is something one struggles to convey. Behind the pine-coated and pen strewn desk in the reception lie the gate-keepers of the school, the people who decide who goes in and who comes out of those hallowed halls of learning. This is the true nerve centre of the school. Therein resides great, great power.Read more
It was February the 27th, having recovered from the post-exam breaks, it felt as though Christmas never really happened (until you see your bank balance that is), and there was still that horrible residual winter frost in the air. In honesty, it was a pretty bleak date, February the 27th. But it's an historic one too, I thought to myself, as I boarded the 143 from University, on my way to my first ever tuition session.Read more