I tutor. Here are some things I’ve asked of parents in the last month:

-please order this book for XYZ purpose: link here
-please upload newest IEP to portal
-here are the additional practice sheets you requested. If you work on them together do this not that
-if your classroom teacher sends a parent update with phonics skills for the week ahead please forward it to me
-try to over-annunciate this sound this week so she can hear it.

Anonymous wrote:Totally depends. Is this a first grader learning to read or a 10th grader learning geometry?

Explain, please. The amount of work the tutor is asking a parent to do is difficult to juggle. What scenario is this okay, regardless of the child’s grade?

These things are reasonable from kid or parent (age dependent):
- find out what the student will learn and approx when (syllabus)
- find out from teacher student’s weaknesses or gaps
- tests/quizzes/assignments
- print out something to work on before or during session
- open emails from tutor and review or work on info/links/practice problems
- update tutor in progress (did better on test, still struggling or making mistakes, etc)
- scheduling and payment

That’s about it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MS, kid went to Mathnasium, I had to drive back and forth and pay the Mathnasium bill

Also MS, different kid, Spanish tutor came to the house, I had to pay them

HS math during covid, all tutoring done virtually, all I and to do was Venmo the payment

your kids' GPAs, APs?

Both currently in college, so no idea GPAs but every semester both have made deans list. So glad those days are over, but yes, both were fast tracked in math starting with compacted math in ES and each had 12ish APs by the end of HS. One plans to graduate early and get a 4th year masters degree at their school

Anonymous wrote:MS, kid went to Mathnasium, I had to drive back and forth and pay the Mathnasium bill

Also MS, different kid, Spanish tutor came to the house, I had to pay them

HS math during covid, all tutoring done virtually, all I and to do was Venmo the payment

your kids' GPAs, APs?

Totally depends. Is this a first grader learning to read or a 10th grader learning geometry?

MS, kid went to Mathnasium, I had to drive back and forth and pay the Mathnasium bill

Also MS, different kid, Spanish tutor came to the house, I had to pay them

HS math during covid, all tutoring done virtually, all I and to do was Venmo the payment

Well, for secondary math, we do send screenshots of the work my kid needs help with - either to actually do it during the tutoring session or, more often, so the tutor can find something similar for additional practice.

And we do also need to identify the topic to cover. With a set tutoring day, that is sometimes a pain - eg, if tutoring is on the day after a test, my kid doesn’t yet know what they need help with or what the new unit is. We do the best we can on those days, try to identify the coming chapter etc.

My child had a reading tutor in early elementary and we had to support the assignments every night. For a tween/teen I would expect the student to have assignments but I wouldn't expect the parents to do much. What does your tutor have you doing?

What do you mean? Is the tutor asking you for the child’s homework?

it depends on so many factors.

often, to reach the learning goal, additional work is needed that goes way beyond tutoring hours. who is going to make sure that work is done? hiring tutors can sometimes lead parents to the belief that their work is done, and the child is learning now. they have a tutor! but sometimes the tutor can't make the student learn because the student is not engaged during classes; the tutor doesn't care; or the amount of learning needed is vastly greater than what can be covered in so many tutoring hours.

What?? The parent does nothing.

Zero

In my very limited experience we didn't do anything - at least no more than we were already doing. But what is the age, subject, frequency of tutoring, etc., and are they asking you to do something that you should already have been doing? E.g., if it's a reading tutor for a young child and a parent wasn't reading to the child, it seems reasonable to strongly recommend nightly reading. But if it's high school chemistry and they want you to review homework daily, that seems redundant.

What are you being asked to do?

DD started with a tutor for the first time and the amount of work the tutor is asking for is really difficult for me to do and at this point it seems like I should tutor my child myself. Is this normal? How much do you get involved with your child's tutor?
For my older child I literally set them up with the tutor and they met and I barely talked to the tutor ever again other than if something needed to be rescheduled.