I offer appointments that can be anywhere from 1 hour to 2.5 hours long. For students who simply need help with a homework assignment, 1 hour is usually enough. Most of my students need me to introduce/review concepts, which often requires a little more time. This makes 1.5 hours the most commonly requested appointment length.

While most of my clients tend to prefer a weekly schedule, you can do either. And in fact, you can also do both! I’ve had clients who choose a regular appointment, but will occasionally schedule an extra appointment or request an extension to the one they already have (usually when they have an upcoming exam). Don’t feel obligated to schedule more than what you actually need, but do try to plan ahead; appointments are reserved on a “first come, first served” basis.

This depends on a student’s needs and their ability to learn independently between tutoring appointments. Some students only need me for 1 hour a month to review for exams. Some need me to teach them an entire course by the end of the school year and need 2-5 hours per week (this is especially true for homeschoolers). Some will do just fine with 1-1.5 hours because they make sure to properly study throughout the week and achieve their own progress by the time they see me again. If you’re not sure, we can start off with something like 1.5 hours per week and change it later if it turns out to be too little or too much.

No. Payments are only made after a lesson (or group of lessons) is completed. I don’t accept advance payments and I don’t require clients to save a credit card on file. After the first appointment, you will have the option to save that information if you choose to do so for your own convenience. While this does put me at risk of not getting paid by a client acting in bad faith, I have found that to be very rare. Anyone planning to do that will only get away with it once, because that will be the last time they see me. The overwhelming majority of my clients are those who have a long-term need, so even the rare few who have bad intentions know that they can’t afford to lose me.

All you need is a microphone and reliable access to the internet. No webcam is necessary on your end. As long as you can see and hear me, and as long as I can hear you, we can hold lessons without issue. (Even if I can’t hear you, you could always communicate with me by typing in the chat window. It’s not ideal, but it has helped in cases where a student’s microphone malfunctioned.)

Emergencies happen, and sometimes that means you need to cancel or reschedule an appointment. There is no cancellation fee. All you have to do is let me know as soon as you can. The sooner you let me know, the greater the chance that I can offer that time to a student who needed an opening in my schedule. Be kind to your fellow students by communicating proactively with me about any scheduling changes. If a pattern of last-minute cancellation (and failure to communicate) starts to develop, tutoring will be paused until a solution is found. If a solution can’t be found, you will have to look for another tutor who is a better fit for your scheduling needs.

If a student is late to an appointment, I wait for about 10-15 minutes before sending a text message. After that text message is sent, I wait for an additional 15 minutes. If I receive no response by then, the appointment is canceled and the client and/or student is notified by text. I usually receive an explanation later in the same day or on a later day. If I haven’t gotten a response by the next appointment and the same thing happens again, I remove all future appointments with that student from the calendar until I get a response.

However, it rarely gets to that point. I usually get a response and the appointment is either started late or rescheduled. If we have to start an appointment late, I will try to give the student as much time as they had planned. That won’t always be possible since I might have another student scheduled immediately after them (I keep at least 15 minutes between appointments), but I will do so if I can. If an appointment is shortened as a result of a late start, I will charge for the time that was actually spent with the student (1 hour minimum, rounded to the nearest 0.25 hours).

Apart from requests I had to refuse for circumstantial reasons (being overbooked, being asked to teach a subject I don’t know, etc.), I will refuse requests if I don’t believe the student is a good fit for me. I work best with students who have a natural interest in math and science and want to pursue a career in a related field. Students who want to pass a class that they never want to think about again will often find my approach to be too long-winded and overwhelming (as I tend to explain concepts as thoroughly as I can), and there are tutors who are better-suited to teaching them without overloading their brains. While it’s a valid need, it’s not a need that I can serve well, so I try to avoid those requests upfront.

Aside from that, I will also avoid requests that come with unreasonable expectations. If a student has a schedule filled to the brim with extracurriculars and expects me to teach them an entire course that they skipped, on top of getting caught up in their current course, and all in a single hour of tutoring per week with no independent study time coming from the student’s side… Would you accept a request like that? (True story, by the way. I did indeed get that sort of request.)

There is no single best answer to this question. It depends on the student. Some parents want their kids to be more independent and will have the student handle all future scheduling and communication with me after the initial request is made by the parent. This tends to work well if the student cares about their own academic performance and has decent time management skills. On the other hand, there are parents who can be too involved. This often makes the student uncomfortable, and I can’t teach them effectively under those circumstances.

The approach I would recommend for parents who aren’t sure is to start off by handling scheduling and communication on behalf of the student, then gradually letting the student take over that role after a few months. From that point on, parents can check in with me every few weeks to ask about progress (although I will have probably contacted them first if there is any cause for concern on this front).

Extensions are sometimes requested by students who want to get caught up after missing an appointment with me or those who have an upcoming exam and discover that they didn’t schedule enough time with me to prepare for it. If, during a lesson, a student decides that they would like to go beyond our scheduled end time, I’m willing to accommodate that request as long as I don’t have another appointment immediately after. An extended session is not allowed to go beyond 2.5 hours in total, and parental approval is required if the student is a minor (unless the parents have already allowed all scheduling and related matters to be handled by the student).

The majority of my lessons go past the scheduled end time and I don’t charge for those extra minutes. It’s very common for me to start explaining a concept or begin a new example problem that takes 15 minutes to cover when we only have 5 minutes left on the clock. Rushing and cutting myself off in the middle of an explanation or an example is not how I like to end my lessons. Additionally, I don’t want my students anxiously looking at the clock when the scheduled end of a lesson draws near; I want them to stay focused. Finally, there will be times when we have to end a lesson a few minutes early, so I like to think of the extra minutes as making up for that in advance. Unless an extension is requested before the end of a lesson, you shouldn’t expect any additional charge.

Quite a lot! I’ve had students work with me for over a year before they finally mention they have ADHD. The fact that I don’t notice it before they tell me probably means I’m doing something right for them. While not an expert, I do read a lot of psychology and neuroscience in my free time. One of my favorites is Brain Rules by John Medina. I incorporate a lot of the ideas from that book into my tutoring practice, especially from the chapter on attention. Re-establishing a student’s attention every few minutes has become second nature to me, and I have little difficulty keeping students’ attention for 2 hours or more. I even had one student who was able to last 5 hours with me, but that’s a story for another time.

I don’t market myself as an SAT tutor. I specialize in teaching courses, not tests. That being said, I will gladly help a student prepare for an SAT subject test if they have already taken several lessons with me. This ensures that they are familiar with my teaching style and know exactly what to expect from me: concepts and problem-solving skills; not test-taking strategies.

Something I’ve realized over my many years of teaching is that my clients don’t choose me for my knowledge. My knowledge (and far more) is available to the whole world for free via the internet. But a lot of people will ignore that and choose to pay me or someone else to do the job instead, and it’s because of how a tutor makes them feel. While subject knowledge is important, the human component is also necessary. Some clients value it more than knowledge, as evidenced by the ones who, after a year or two of working with me, will ask me to teach a subject that they know I don’t teach.

For that reason, I would recommend that you search for a tutor who values and embodies that personal/human component in their practice. Do they really try to give you your money’s worth? Or do they nickel and dime you for going a few minutes over your scheduled time? Do they try their best to be flexible and accommodate you? Or do they insist that you accommodate them? Do they tell you what they honestly think about a student’s situation? Or do they only tell you what you want to hear and make promises that they can’t keep? Does their overall conduct make you consider, even if it’s just for a split second, continuing to book them for longer than needed just to serve as a good role model for the student?

I could go on, but I think it’s also important to mention that this goes both ways. Tutors are human beings, too. If you want the best out of your tutor, you need to be ready to act in good faith when you interact with them. If both parties act in good faith, then I think that’s when the value of tutoring truly shines. I know it can be hard for those of you who’ve had bad experiences with tutors in the past (and I’ve heard some of those stories from my own clients talking about some of their previous tutors), but the simple fact of the matter is that a tutor who cares is a tutor who won’t tolerate a client that acts in bad faith, and you’ll have a hard time finding them if you don’t build your half of the bridge.

I didn’t mean for this to become an entire essay, but I’m keeping it here. Hopefully, it will inspire someone out there. (And because I know some of you are reading this and thinking I should teach writing… I’m sorry, but that’s not a subject I offer. Yes, I’ve been asked before. A scary number of times!)

I used to submit a summary/report for every lesson, but I stopped because most of my clients didn’t read them. I will often be the first one to send a message to parents if there’s anything requiring their immediate attention, but if you ever want to check in on how things are going, feel free to text me and ask! If you happen to be available for a few minutes after the end of an appointment, we can talk right then and there.

I personally don’t have an objection to being observed, as it usually gives me the opportunity to prove to parents that they made the right choice in working with me. However, students tend to become distracted and uncomfortable when parents sit in on their lessons, so I would recommend making plans to sit in for only 10 minutes or so, and only occasionally.

As long as it’s for personal use and we talk about it first, I don’t mind. Students can even share the recordings with a few friends/classmates as long as the recordings aren’t being duplicated or transferred between devices (i.e., the student is present with their friend or classmate when watching the recording). However, if I discover that these recordings are being posted publicly or sold as a course without my permission, I may have to take legal action. I already have free lessons on YouTube and I’m looking to add more in the future, so I would recommend sharing those with friends/classmates who can’t come over to watch lesson recordings on your device.

All that being said, I don’t think most students will benefit from recording the lessons. It becomes easy for students to lose focus when they know that a lesson is being recorded, and the students who don’t lose focus will often find themselves not needing the recordings in the first place. Finally, I think it’s beneficial to hear another person’s explanation of a concept when reviewing material, so I recommend using some of the many online resources that I show to my students if they ever need a review. I think listening to those different perspectives will be more beneficial than hearing only my explanation of a concept over and over again.

If you have my phone number and would like to share it with a friend, that’s perfectly fine. Make sure to let them know that they should leave a voicemail or text because I rarely pick up phone calls from unknown numbers. I would still like them to fill out a request form, so please link them to the home page and let them get that done early.

It depends on the goal for the session, but it typically goes in one of the following directions:

1. I ask about questions the student wants to prioritize from the most recent homework I gave them. If they don’t have any, I will go over the ones that I consider to be important. If time allows, I then start introducing the next topic.

2. We’re starting a new chapter and I just start lecturing. Sometimes I will have given the student a video to watch or a simulation to play around with in preparation for the new chapter and may ask if they had questions or observations to discuss before we start. As I present concepts, I address questions from the student and/or ask them questions to check their understanding, and we eventually look at some example problems if time allows.

3. The student has a test coming up and would like to prepare for it. I ask where the student feels that they have the most difficulty and we start looking at problems of that type, eventually moving on to as many topics as time allows.

4. I have plans to cover a topic or homework I assigned, but the student proposes a change of plans to look at a different topic. For example, I may be asked by a physics student to cover calculus instead because they have an upcoming test and/or would like to look ahead. Or perhaps their teacher presented a new topic earlier in the week and the student doesn’t feel like they understood it from class. I know my core subjects really well, so I can quickly adapt and this rarely causes me any difficulty. I also have my textbooks on hand in case the requested topic isn’t one that I know too well. If all else fails, I may postpone the meeting and give myself time to prepare. If that’s not possible, I try my best with the time we have, and may try to tie loose ends after the lesson by recording a video and sending it to the student.

5. The student has a homework assignment and/or worksheet they want to get through. These types of lessons have become less common for me since I typically teach students who are learning topics from me without the involvement of their school teacher(s), but they tend to be straightforward. We go through the list of problems, and if I see signs that the student is misunderstanding something, I add in some quick examples to help clear up their confusion.