Tutoring Younger Kids: A Business for Teens

What you actually do

Once a week, for an hour, you sit with a younger kid at their kitchen table and help them with the one thing they're stuck on. Not their whole school year. One thing. Long division. Reading out loud. French verbs. You explain it a different way from the teacher, you go slowly, and you let them get it wrong without making it a big deal.

The parents are paying for progress they can see, and for the relief of not being the one who has to explain fractions at 9 p.m. A teenager who remembers what it was like to be nine is often better at this than an adult.

What it costs to start

Nothing you don't already own. A notebook, some pencils, and whatever the kid is using at school. If you want to look organised, a folder for each student and a few printed worksheets are about $10 to $20. Ask a parent before you use up the printer ink.

Your real investment is preparation. Spend twenty minutes before each session working out what you'll do. A tutor who turns up with a plan is worth twice one who turns up and asks "so, what are you doing in class?"

Find your first student this month

1. Pick one subject and one grade range. "Grade 4 to 6 math" is a business. "Anything, any age" is not.
2. Ask your own teacher, or a teacher of that grade, whether they know a family who'd want help. Teachers hear "my kid is struggling" every week, and they can't tutor those kids themselves.
3. Ask a parent to message two or three families they know with kids that age. "Jacob is in Grade 10, he's strong in math, and he's offering an hour a week for $20."
4. Offer the first session as a trial. You find out whether you can actually help this kid, and the parent finds out whether their kid will listen to you.

What to charge

Tutoring centres in most Canadian cities charge a lot per hour, and part of that pays for the building. You don't have a building. A young tutor charging $15 to $25 an hour is a bargain for a parent and good money for you.

Say you charge $20 and take on three students, one hour each per week. That's $60 a week, about $240 a month, for three hours of work and an hour of preparation. It runs for the whole school year, which is the part people miss. A tutoring business you start in October is worth real money by June.

Ask what other tutors near you charge before you decide. It varies by city and by subject.

Rules and staying safe

Show a parent this section.

• Tutor at the student's kitchen table with a parent home, or at the public library. Never in a bedroom, and never alone in a house.
• Your parent should know where you are and when you finish.
• Only tutor families a parent of yours knows, or families a teacher connected you with.
• Be honest about what you can do. If a kid needs more help than you can give, say so. Parents remember the tutor who told them the truth.
• Get paid at the end of each session or each month, in cash or by e-transfer to a parent's account.

Ask a teacher before you start if you're tutoring through a school program, because your school may have its own rules about who can do it and where. Never photograph a student's work and send it anywhere either. It is their work, and their parents did not agree to that.

What Jacob would do

Jacob is 15, lives in Toronto, and is the kid in his building everyone's parents already ask for help with math homework. He'd stop doing it for nothing and turn it into a business, which is the whole point of the course he's on.

He'd pick Grade 5 and 6 math, because that's where most kids fall off, and he'd start with the two families in his building who already ask. He'd bring a whiteboard marker and use the fridge. He'd send the parent a two-line text after every session saying what they worked on and what to practise, because a parent who can see progress pays for the whole year.

When it stops being fun

A kid who doesn't want to be there. A parent who wants a miracle by the next report card. A Wednesday where you have your own test to study for and someone else's fractions to teach.

The way through is fewer students and a clear deal. Three families who love you beat six who are lukewarm, and a parent who's been told "I'll help, but I can't promise an A" is a parent you can keep.

Say that sentence at the first session, with the student sitting there. It sounds like you are managing expectations, and you are, but it also tells a nine-year-old that you are on their side rather than checking up on them. That is most of why a kid decides to like you.