June 2022 Update: I believe this page is now mainly of historical interest. Covid-19 is actually on the rise again as I write, and our business is still regularly disrupted by positive cases, but it seems most people are now taking it in stride. Our mask policy is now whatever you and the client agree on. We continue to strongly urge you to get vaccinated.
March 2021 Update: The vaccines are rolling out, so maybe we will able to abandon masks by the summer. But not yet, so please continue to follow our guidelines below.
June Update: We are back to offering in-home tutoring. That’s what we do best and what many clients want. We are not actively advising clients to have the tutor back in their homes, so if online tutoring continues to work for you, there is no need to change….yet! We’ve done our best to keep our tutors whole during the coronavirus mess, but we are now considering tiering our pricing, offering a discount for online tutoring and paying you less for online work. Otherwise we cannot be competitive in the online space. We’d love your feedback at tutors@inhometutors.us
May 1 Update: We adapted to a new normal in April. Many of our tutors have successfully moved to online tutoring with their clients and we are in no hurry to change that. Staying home and minimizing outside contacts remain the best way to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But Georgia and other states are now lifting lockdown restrictions and we are considering resuming in-home tutoring, with the updated restrictions below. This will always be your choice as a tutor. We are not yet ready to announce the resumption of face-to-face tutoring.
April 1 Update: In the lifetime, I mean two weeks, since I wrote the post below, events have moved very quickly and many of our service areas including all metro Atlanta counties, most of metro Orlando and all Connecticut have issued “shelter in place” orders. We expect our tutors to respect that. Which means online tutoring is now the recommended solution for our company. Please see our guides to online tutoring, described here.
March 9, 2020: We will all be impacted by the spread of the coronavirus over the next few months. It’s not clear if our tutoring business will dry up or whether parents will need extra help as their children move to an online schooling environment. Here are In-Home Tutors’ guidelines we ask all tutors to follow.
1. Stay home if you feel symptoms coming on, or if you are exposed to someone with COVID-19.
2. Before going to a client’s home, please check that they consider their household safe. Everyone in their household should be at low risk for major COVID complications (eg they don’t have diabetes, heart failure, asthma, chronic obstructive lung disease, etc) Elderly relatives in the home would also be a risk factor making you think twice about tutoring in their home. Call us if anything a client says rings alarm bells.
3. Buy an alcohol-based hand-sanitizer and at the start of the lesson clean your hands or, much better, wash them thoroughly for 20 seconds — do not hesitate to ask the parent for permission to use their sink, or to ask your student to wash their hands too. Wipe down the table where you will be working.
4. Wear a mask. At your discretion, ask the student to wear a mask too. The diagram below is quite instructive, provided by one of our tutors who is an MD in Atlanta:
5. If possible, work on a patio or outside table. Let those virus particles float off into space!
6. Avoid touching your student or shaking hands with the parent. Maybe the namaste gesture?
Good, no-nonsence recommendations. Thank you. What about students or parents who are sick? I just had a cancellation today.
You will certainly have cases where the parent or child is sick. You need to protect yourself, so it’s fine to cancel. A more interesting question is where the parent says they or their child may have been exposed but they do not know for sure. In that case, your choice can be based on how strong you feel your own immune system is. If you choose to go to their home, take the precautions we recommend, wash your hands on arrival, wipe down any shared device, keep your distance from the may-be-infected party, etc. We promise you, In-Home Tutors will not pressure any tutor to do something against their better judgment. We will support you if you choose to be cautious and not tutor for a while (but please please let us know….don’t just stop tutoring with telling anyone!)