Math Tutoring Jobs
Math tutoring jobs are easy to find if you live in or near a big enough city. Of course, you can find one online, but if you prefer to work one-on-one with a real live student, then private math tutoring jobs are for you.
Here is exactly how I found my first math tutoring job and then 25 years of math tutoring jobs after that flowed from that one first contact.
I graduated with a degree in chemistry, but was always good at math and loved to solve problems. Often I helped fellow students with their difficult homework problems when I was still in College, and then later in University.
A year or so after graduating and returning home, I happened to be talking to a friend of mine who was a high school teacher. At the time I was working in a lab but not very satisfied with my job. This friend told me that at her high school, the office keeps a list of tutors for students or parents who inquire about getting extra homework help outside of school time. She said she could put my name on it if I desired, so I agreed.
Within a week, I got a call for my first tutoring job. I had tutored this student for about a week, when I started getting more calls than I had time to tutor. To make a long story short, I quit my lab job I didn’t like very much and turned to tutoring full-time. Each student spread the word about my tutoring skills as well as my name was still on the tutoring list at the high school. This job lasted me 25 years until I decided to retire from it. I enjoyed it so much. My retirement came between my fourth and fifth child. After the fifth (and the last) child, the mother of one of my former students approached me. I had been retired for 2-3 years by then. She desperately wanted me to tutor her youngest child. Reluctantly, I agreed. I am so glad I made that decision! I fell in love with tutoring once again, and since my last baby was now a toddler, I was able to fit it into my schedule again.
Tutoring is a great way to raise a family and work from home. You make all the decisions. You are your own boss. You decide your schedule and your rate of pay. I would recommend tutoring to anyone who wants to enjoy these same benefits.
The problem is, with the economic downturn, everyone is trying to either tutor or set up a tutoring business. Rates have plummeted and even experienced tutors (like me) are having trouble getting noticed amidst all the new competition. I recently saw an ad from a respected agency looking for tutors for subjects including calculus and the pay was only a max of $12 per hour. The money used to be good because highly educated people had other job options. Now they’re taking any jobs available and offering their services as tutors as well.
This has coincided with the inability of parents to pay for tutoring services due to the decline in their own incomes. So we have numerous new entrants to the field combined with sharply reduced ability of clients to afford tutoring services. Their kids still need the help, but now they can get it a lot cheaper than they could before the Great Recession started.
I will say that the only response I get from my marketing is when I lower rates to $11 – $15 or so…because that’s what college students and (formerly) highly paid professionals charge and I have to be able to meet their price, or I don’t get any business or referrals… That’s the state of the business in Dec. 2010 and it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse. But I’m happy to have the flexibility and the extra income you described, even if it’s just a little tiny bit of extra income. Even so, I’m considering giving up on tutoring entirely or switching to strictly online tutoring. If I’m going to take a huge pay cut, I might as well do it in my pajamas!