In-Home Tutors keeps its fees reasonable. But all the same, clients who hire one of our tutors expect a subject matter expert. We need you to present yourselves as a professional tutor and — of course — to actually be one.

It’s very embarrassing to us when a tutor tells the client: “I haven’t done geometry since High School!”  We never expect you to lie, but we also don’t want you sabotaging your chance of success. Please appear confident and ensure you know your subject.

Tutors often ask if they can review the child’s materials ahead of time. This can also be problematic. Parents expect the tutors to know the material and also do not want to go through the time-consuming chore of downloading tests or assignments and finding a way to get them to you electronically. We do think it’s reasonable to ask about the topic you’ll cover. So maybe the student will say, “we’re working on Rational Exponents and Radicals,” and then it would be a mark of professionalism for you to take 10 minutes to go on kahnacademy.org to review that topic and feel confident in your ability to tutor it.

Our point being, please only accept assignments from us if you are confident of your abilities.

One exception is when you accept a homework coach role, where the mission is to keep the student on track with all subjects. In that case, your role is helping with organization and time management and if you help the student with a particular assignment, you are not expected to also be a subject expert. Even if you do not know a word of Spanish, you can still quiz the child on an upcoming Spanish vocabulary test.