Benefits of Teaching at Your Own Home

“In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.” - Phil Collins

It’s a fact that the private tutoring market is growing. Being a private tutor is now a proper job that takes time and experience. Whether it’s maths tutorials, homework help, online tutorials, or intensive classes, the possibilities are endless when it comes to one-to-one tutoring.

In this article, we’ll look at teaching from the comfort of your own home. There’s a growing demand for private tutorials and more and more people are choosing to become private tutors themselves. In fact, a large number of children have taken private tutorials and are getting private tutorials in order to help them through primary school, secondary school, college, sixth form, and even university. The figures speak for themselves.

Whether you teach calculus, algebra, test prep, biology, mathematics, statistics, geometry, grammar, psychology, etc., academic support is a good market to be in and there are many tutors who choose to offer their tutorials in their own houses for a number of good reasons that we’re going to have a look at in this article.

So what are the advantages of teaching your private tutorials in your own house?

If you're just getting started, don't forget that you can look for online tutoring jobs here.

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Teaching at Your Own Home: A Dedicated Space

Whether you’re teaching maths, a language tutorial, or preparing students for GCSE or A Level exams, private tutorials require a specific set of skills that not everyone has. Teaching private tutorials at your home is different to teaching at a student’s home and comes with a number of advantages.

A private tutor usually goes to their student’s house and has to adapt to each environment they find themselves in. In this case, the roles are reversed and the student comes to the tutor’s house. It’s, therefore, easier for the tutor to feel at ease and teach under the best conditions.

The relationship between the student and the teacher becomes less formal. That said, this can make lessons for stimulating than just any old lesson. You can get the most out of your home by doing a few things to make it more conducive to teaching.

A good teacher will be able to separate where they live, eat, and sleep from where they work and teach physics, chemistry, exam prep classes, etc. The space needs to be correctly used for teaching.

This space comes with a number of important advantages and can help the teacher develop a better relationship with their student. In fact, by coming to their teacher’s house, students will feel closer to them. Furthermore, it’s much easier teaching in your own home.

Of course, if you're a chemistry tutor, for example, your student mightn't have the equipment they need. However, if you're an English tutor, French tutor, or a reading tutor, you should be able to bring a few books with you in order to provide supplemental instruction.

You may even consider holding lessons outdoors!

Teaching at Your Own Home: An Easier Way to Teach

Teaching at your own home is a way to create your own teaching approach. From your first lesson to preparing students for their final exams, you can do anything you like at your own home. From worksheets to exercise books, the student just has to say what they want to work on and their tutor will be able to get it ready!

Contrary to teaching students in their homes, teaching at your own home is a much easier way to teach for a number of reasons:

• You’re closer to the student, making it easier to help them.
• Saving time travelling
• You feel more comfortable, which makes explaining things easier.
• You can dedicate a space in your home to teach.
• You can save money by not having to travel (public transport, petrol, etc.)
• You’ll feel more relaxed and therefore be able to create a more relaxed environment for teaching in.
• And many more...

In fact, there are a good number of advantages to teaching at home which can help the tutor help their student to succeed. Whether you’re teaching maths, piano, exam technique, or any other subject, the tutor is the expert. Being a good teacher isn’t about having all the right qualifications, it’s about being able to communicate effectively.

It’s much easier to communicate from the comfort of your own home with all the necessary resources on hand. Once again, whether you’re doing a Spanish tutorial, teaching students how to sing, academic support, or maths and science tutorials, it’s far easier to do at home. Of course, you need to set boundaries so that you won’t feel like your home is being invaded by students.

Teaching tutorials in your own home needs to be done in a professional and legitimate way. From IT tutorials to A Level prep, tutors need to ensure that they remain a teacher first and foremost. That said, a good teacher can still create a relaxed and enjoyable environment for students to work in.

Learn about cooperative learning here.

Teaching at Your Own Home: Setting Limits

Despite all the advantages, there are still ways that teaching at home can go wrong. In fact, if you want to teach all your tutorials at home and finish with more money at the end of the month, you’re going to end up teaching a lot of students, some of whom may end up invading your personal space. You need to, therefore, set boundaries.

After all, your main goal is to teach your students and you need to ensure that your relationship remains as neutral and professional as possible. Right from the start, you need to make it clear to your students that their classroom is also your home. Regardless of the room, they’re in, it’s still part of your home.

While this is the reason that both the tutor and student get more out of the tutorials, there are boundaries that need to be respected and you don’t want to give off the idea that you two are good mates hanging out. You have to remain as professional as possible and keep your professional life apart from your private life.

This can be difficult since everything in your house is probably an indicator of your private life: a family photo, a pet barging in, or just personal notes on your desk. You need to make sure that you prepare adequately before you start teaching.

That said, this is all par for the course when you’re a private tutor. In addition to getting word of mouth to work its magic and looking for students on online platforms like Superprof, you also need to know how to take care of the little things such as ensuring your home is a suitable place to teach in. Your role is to make sure that you provide effective tutorials that make the most of the advantages of being taught in your home.

If you’ve set appropriate boundaries, you can enjoy the benefits of a class taught in a classroom with the advantages that a homely environment can bring. Students learn much better when they’re relaxed, after all. With the right workspace, both the tutor and the student will benefit.

As you’ve probably understood, there are a lot of advantages to teaching in your own home that can help improve the quality of the private tuition you provide. Furthermore, it makes your life easier and your classes more interesting. Just make sure that there’s a clear line between your professional and private lives so that the relationships with your students don’t become too casual!

Want to give private lessons?

Join the Superprof community and share your knowledge with interested and motivated students.

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Offering Online Tutoring Services

It doesn’t matter where you live, you can offer one on one private tutoring to anyone in the country via webcam. This is a learning approach that suits children living in rural areas. It can be difficult to find a tutor for students in smaller towns and villages where there are so few inhabitants that one-to-one tutoring and private tuition wouldn't be viable.

The digital revolution has changed the private tutorials market by letting children and adults living in villages with fewer than 100 inhabitants learn. This means that there are academic tutoring jobs available to everyone with a decent internet connection.

That said, it can cost you more to get started as an online tutor as you'll need to make sure your internet connection is fast enough and maybe even upgrade it. You'll also need to invest in a decent webcam and a microphone or a headset. While many laptops come with these built-in, they're usually not very good.

Remote learning means that the student doesn’t have to be in the same physical location as the tutor.

How do you do it? How do I get paid?

The simplest way is to get paid via bank transfer or PayPal. You could also get paid by cheque, but this will take much longer.

You could also create an academic support website where your students can pay online for your tutorials like they would any other product on an online shop.

For students who need help with languages, one on one tutoring over webcam is great because you can still speak with the learner. If they need to succeed in a speaking exam, you could consider scheduling intensive speaking sessions.

For students struggling with calculus, geometry, trigonometry, and algebra, there are plenty of useful online resources for mathematics tutors. Don't worry that your student isn't in the same room as you, an online tutor can use software to correct homework or an assignment remotely.

For students that need general academic coaching or help with their studies, an online tutor can be useful for providing important feedback on their work, set them tasks to do, and scheduling regular mentoring sessions.

Don't forget that in addition to choosing the right place to be tutored, you need to be confident in your choice of tutor. To find the best tutors and guarantee academic success, you should keep in mind that most tutors on Superprof offer free tutoring for the first hour. Get the most of this hour by discussing how your child is doing in school, what their instructor can offer them in terms of study skills, and have them sit down with your child so that they can work out their strengths and weaknesses.

Follow these suggestions for other places you could host lessons...

An online tutor won't have to pay transport costs and, as a result, can pass these savings onto the student. Don't forget that a lot of tutors on Superprof offer free tutoring for the first hour in order to help them get more tutoring jobs. Online tutorials are very popular for those studying languages as they get an opportunity to practise the language with the tutor, who can help with pronunciation, grammar, etc. Scheduling online private tutorials is easier as well since you don't need to work out where you have to go.

By Comparison – Teaching at the Student's Home

There are many of us who may not have the option to teach at our own homes, or just prefer to visit students. Below, we look at the pros and cons of visiting the student's home.

The Advantages of Private Tutorials at the Student’s Home

It’s hardly surprising that students prefer the tutor to come to their house for private tutorials. It can be hard enough sometimes trying to encourage a child to sit down and do there homework. Imagine convincing them to take a bus or walk along to a tutor's home to do it!

With the tutor coming to them, they just have to get out their pens and books and wait for their tutor to arrive.

Even if a student is waiting for you to arrive, make sure you tell them that they have to be ready at a certain time. The last thing you want is to waste the first five or ten minutes of your tutorial because they're scrambling around looking for their homework or their textbook!

This type of academic support is useful for plenty of different subjects including maths, physics, biology, chemistry, English, French, Spanish, German, etc.

From a practical point of view, the student doesn’t have to waste time on public transport and they can study in a suitable environment.

On the other hand, the parents will have to pay slightly more since the tutor’s rates will have been calculated taking the transport costs into account.

Private tutorials at a student’s house are also a good way to make students feel more at home (literally). Some students struggle with studying in an unfamiliar environment and to make your life and your student's life easier, you want to make them feel as comfortable as possible.

So how can you help a student who’s struggling before their first tutorial’s even started?

Another huge advantage of travelling to the student’s house is that you have the option to also teach primary school children who’d otherwise need to be taken to your house or take public transport on their own. Those who are very young probably wouldn’t be able to traverse larger cities.

Find reputable online teaching jobs here.

What Are the Disadvantages of Teaching at the Student’s House?

It’s midday and I’ve an hour-long maths tutorial. I have to leave at half past to get to my student’s house for two in the afternoon.

Sometimes you’ll be expected to travel long distances if you live in some of the larger cities in the UK.

If you earn £20 or £25 the hour, it can quickly become half that amount once you’ve considered how much travelling you’ve done.

I used to teach science tutorials and I was wasting so much time travelling to teach just one student. It’s was worrying because I couldn’t make the student pay double. That’s one of the main problems with teaching a student at their home.

Secondary school students tend to have busy schedules (especially when they're doing their GCSEs and A Levels) and are rarely available for some of the most common working hours during the week.

Private tutorials need to work around the student’s schedule. As a result, you may be expected to offer tutorials during evenings, weekends, school holidays, and bank holidays.

In other words, a private tutor tends to work when everyone else isn’t working. Academic support is often presented as a way to help a student improve their grades, better understand certain aspects of their classes, and revise for exams and do test prep.

Even experienced tutors aren’t miracle workers. How can you teach a student who has literally no interest in learning?

Wouldn’t it be better to try a different approach?

You could teach your classes outside in a relaxing public place like a library, cafe, etc. Of course, if your student’s an adult, a quiet pub could be ideal. Of course, it goes without saying: You can’t take primary school students to the pub!

Some subjects, like foreign languages, can be taught almost anywhere.

It’s much nicer learning French or Spanish in a nice café or outside in the sun when the weather’s nice. How would you plan for your first lessons outdoors?

The most important thing about academic tutoring is that the student can find a tutor to help them develop study skills, provide them with quality instruction, and give them the confidence to complete an assignment, learn on their own, in a small group, or a large class, and become an avid learner. The best tutors will do this by choosing the right place to provide instruction.

After that, your next question may be how much to charge for each lesson?