Adult Education : How To Become A Tutor

“Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.” - Dalai Lama XIV

Adults are just like children and teenagers, sometimes they need to be trained to get better at a given subject or discipline or just become better at what they do.

In recent years, the private tutoring market has continued to grow. An increasing number of adults are employing private tutors to teach them new skills, discover new hobbies, or improve their job prospects. In fact, adult education and professional training are some of the most common reasons for adults to hire a private tutor.

As you’ll see, there are a number of different ways in which you can become a private tutor who teaches adult students. One of the best ways to get into private tutoring is to go freelance.

In our second article on tutoring adults, we're looking at the reasons to do it, the role experience plays in teaching adults, how you can find students, and the pros and cons of teaching adults as a freelance private tutor.

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Reasons To Become a Freelance Tutor

Teaching adults as a freelance private tutor is a rich and rewarding vocation. While enthusiasm for teaching, a knowledge of teaching approaches, and professional experience are all important, you need to understand what really draws people into adult learning.

Since freelancing doesn’t provide as much job security, you have to be motivated and have a good knowledge of teaching resources.

In fact, motivation plays a key role in the success of private tutors. Wanting to share knowledge and skills is what really counts when you decide to do this job. This type of teaching, after all, is all about effectively providing adult learners with knowledge, new professional skills, and the passion to learn more!

You’ll also need to be confident, both in and out of the classroom and make sure that you provide instruction in a good learning environment. Confident tutors teach classes in their own style and it takes a certain type of person to work for themselves and strive to deliver the best classes they possibly can.

So how can you become a private tutor for adults?

Like all freelancers, you need to create and find your own work, which means you don’t have to belong to another organization.

However, to ensure your business lasts, you need to be a credible tutor with a good knowledge of your subject and how to teach it. You can’t make it up as you go along. Your lessons need to be instructional and provide a learning experience that makes adults happy they're continuing their learning.

You need to encourage adults as they work on tasks and make sure you take the different learning styles into account. The ways you plan your lessons are going to be different for adults who are continuing education since you're providing guidance to students who've developed problem-solving skills, understand why they're being taught, and have a lot of life experience that they can use in the learning process.

Additionally, the instructor needs to create their own curriculum in some cases. If an adult student isn't studying for a particular exam, the learning activities can be more informal, drawing on the student's life experiences. Designing these kinds of activities and applying them to the student's own life is also incredibly rewarding and transformative for both the tutor and the student and can be done for both the arts and sciences.

The Experience of Being a Freelance Tutor

We can’t stress this enough, you need to be motivated in order to become a freelance private tutor. Teaching adults is no exception.

However, it also requires a lot of experience as it’s likely that you’ll be teaching professionals about a subject that they’re already well-versed in.

This is a job that requires a lot of experience. Once you have the experience, there’s nothing stopping you from teaching adults freelance.

Learning with a private tutor for adults is a great way for them to improve, get training in skills they’re interested in, or learn new professional skills. Getting training for a new project is an interesting endeavor and you could be the tutor in charge of it.

In short, being a freelance private tutor for adults is to be a trained teacher with the experience to get the most out of enthusiastic students wanting to learn new skills. However, you need to keep in mind that being a freelancer isn’t all fun and games and certainly isn’t a lifelong holiday! While you’re freer in some ways, you’re more constrained in others.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Being an Adult Education Teacher

While becoming a freelance private tutor for adults is a great way to start teaching others, there are advantages to doing so and disadvantages too, so you need to know exactly what you’re in for before you take the plunge. As we said, it’s not all fun and games!

The Advantages

Being a freelancer comes with a lot of freedom and allows a tutor to manage their own timetable as they please and rest on their financial laurels if they so wish. If you want to take a holiday or do something else, you can. This is probably why freelancing is becoming so popular in many different lines of work.

Similarly, while there are plenty of professional qualifications, you don’t actually need any particular qualification in order to teach adults. In fact, you can create your own profession and prove its validity with the quality of your work. Those posing as tutors and offering inferior classes are quickly found out and unmasked.

Furthermore, you can set up your schedule as you see fit and choose what kind of work you want to do. If you want to teach part-time, you can. If you want to adapt your teaching to recently-graduated students, you can do that too! Managing your timetable is at the heart of being a freelancer.

Find more about jobs in education.

The Disadvantages

Every job has its advantages and disadvantages and tutoring is no exception. In fact, while the advantages make freelance tutoring look like a dream job, there are certainly some drawbacks that need to be carefully considered.

Financially speaking, you won’t have as much job security or a regular salary, something which can be a great source of stress for freelancers. Of course, while you can manage your time as you see fit, you’re not always guaranteed to have work to freely schedule.

As a freelancer, you’re completely independent, you don’t work for a particular company or individual and, as a result, do not have any obligations to anyone other than yourself. Of course, this is also true in reverse which means you’re not always guaranteed customers or students.

Furthermore, if you’re teaching adults, you really need to know what you’re talking about because it’s very likely that you’ll be teaching people at a high level who already know quite a lot about the subject you cover. In fact, adults seem to know more than teenagers and are just as likely to talk back to you if you get something wrong so make sure you’re you’re on top of things!

While teaching adults as a freelance private tutor can be liberating, there are also a lot of constraints. Nevertheless, teaching adults is a rewarding profession with each day bringing its own challenges and rewards.

So, as you can see, private tutoring isn’t just for children. In fact, as a freelancer, you get to choose what you teach, who you teach, where you teach, and where you teach!

If you want to teach an adult learner, you'll need to consider researching adult learning theory, employing self-directed learning strategies, and how vocational learning can help adults in the workplace.

As an educator, it's your job to be au fait with the different learning theories and strategies and the principles of adult learning in order to help older students looking to learn something new.

It might be worthwhile researching Malcolm Knowles and the theory of andragogy and its six assumptions: Need to know, Foundation, Self-concept, Readiness, Orientation, and Motivation.

If you're ready to go, you just need to create your profile on Superprof and start offering tutorials to potential students. You can either teach individual private tutorials, online tutorials via webcam, or group tutorials to multiple students at once.

Tips For Freelancers: What You Need To Know

Now that we've discussed some of the pros and cons of being a freelance tutor and a freelance tutor for adults specifically, we have a series of advice for you if you decide to take the plunge and become a freelance adult education teacher. In order to succeed in this work modality you will have to be very diligent, passionate and organized and these tips might help you make sure you are staying on top of everything you need.

1. Understand your target market: Before you start working as a freelance tutor you need to ask yourself who your clients really are. Depending on the subject that you are teaching, your expertise and certificates, you might have different target audiences. Understanding your prospective client base will help you to plan your pricing structure, implement your marketing strategy and focus your time and energy.
2. Be flexible and don't be afraid to experiment: There is a lot to learn when you first start freelancing. You might have an idea of what your lessons might look like and how you will act around your students but you need to be flexible enough to pivot and always learn new things. The process in itself will teach you a lot and your students will also help you grow as a tutor. Be open to learning from everything around you.
3. Be clear on costs: it is super important to make sure you have a clear idea about your costs and pricing structure. You should define your hourly rate considering your costs. A good way to set it is with this simple formula: Your basic hourly rate = (annual salary + annual expenses + annual profit) / annual billable work hours. You should also do your market research to ensure that you are in line with your competitors.
4. Get compliant: make sure you are on the right track when it comes to everything you need to settle money, tax and government wise. Future you will thank you for being organized since the beginning.
5. Make a good first impression: whether in person, through social media or on your Superprof profile, you need to look professional and knowledgeable. Give your CV, LinkedIn page and social profiles a little love before looking for students so they have a chance to be wowed by you when they check them out.
6. Be confident in your skills and abilities: It might be daunting at first to put yourself out there, but don’t be afraid to show your skills to people. You might not know this yet but you are probably exactly what someone needs (you just don't know it yet).
7. Stay motivated: Being a freelancer is no piece of cake and you will need a mentality that will help you get through the ups and downs of freelance life. You can set yourself goals to stay motivated. These could be financial such as ‘I want to be earning X per month’, or it could be to ‘have X numbers of new students’. When your focus is wavering, remind yourself of your targets.
8. Be ready to network: You never know where you might find a new prospective student. Design yourself a professional stack of business cards and keep some in every pocket or handbag. You never know when a tutoring opportunity might arise!
9. Define your niche: We all wish we could be a jack of all trades but in the tutoring world that proves to be one of the most counter-productive things. Our advice is to be super specialized in one subject that you can share knowledge on and make sure that you become an expert in your field.
10. Stay knowledgeable: Stay up to date with new trends and information by reading relevant media, engaging with fellow freelancers, attending sector-specific networking events or even doing some online training courses. Remember that the world evolves really fast and you need to move with it.
11. Register with freelance job websites: Superprof is an ideal place for you to find work. Make sure that your profile is as good as possible to start connecting with students. Start responding to people’s requests and those freelancing jobs will soon come pouring in.
12. Get organized: Time management is a big issue for freelancers since they don't have the routine of office hours or set vacation days. Make sure you are managing your time effectively, tracking those all-important leads and keeping on top of invoices.
13. Build relationships: getting new students can be exhilarating and rewarding but don’t neglect those who you are already working with or have worked with in the past. Remember that recommendations are super important so build your relationships and make every student feel like a priority.
14. Set work boundaries: One big issue of being a freelance tutor is that, while you might have much more flexibility with your family and friends, it can also result in late nights and unproductivity. Try to specify when you will be working and stick to your schedule and working hours.
15. Be upfront: It is super important to be clear and genuine from the get-go. Let them know what you can and cannot do, what you need in terms of money, time and commitment and anything else you find could be important for you to feel like your job is a safe space.
16. Define a working space: While some students might like online classes, others will probably ask for in-person lessons. Find a good space to give your classes, somewhere quiet, not super crowded and where you both can concentrate.
17. Don't give up: The experience of freelancing comes with many ups and downs. Some days will be hard but learn from them and keep going. The journey to becoming a successful freelance tutor will not be without its challenges!

Find Students With Superprof

If you are ready to go out into the world as a freelance tutor for adults, finding students is probably something that will take time. While word of mouth and recommendations are always a good place to find prospective students, at Superprof we also believe in the power of connection through our platform.

Superprof is designed to bring together tutors and students from all over who want to learn and share knowledge. Our website is designed in the most intuitive way to help you connect with people who are looking specifically for someone with your skillset.

But, how does it work? The process is quite simple. All you need to do is create your tutor profile where you will specify anything and everything there is to know about you as a tutor: your qualifications, experience, teaching method, hourly rate and availability.

Make sure that your profile is up to date and as polished as possible since this will be your "business card" for the Superprof community. Once your profile is ready and published, students will be able to contact you, asking specific questions about your lessons and your availability. You can take it from there.

We recommend that you do a first "interview" meeting with your new prospective student to get to know them. Make sure that this meeting is an open conversation where you state your experience and method clearly and ask them what their objectives are. Remember that the role of a tutor is to get their student to reach their goals and you need to be well aware of what those goals are before you start working.

You should also use this meeting to establish certain things like:

• The frequency of your lessons
• The format of your lessons. Will they be online? In person? A hybrid format? Will they last an hour, two hours?
• How you will evaluate progress. Will there be testing involved? Any materials to follow up on new knowledge?
• What days will you get together for your lessons?

Remember to jot down all of the details and input all the information into your calendar so you start getting organized. The key to freelancing is staying on top of everything you need to do and making sure that you are making the most of your time.

Little by little you will start getting more student requests on the platform and will have to sort your schedule to fit them in. Make sure you ask your students for reviews after they have taken classes with you. Student reviews are an excellent way to show your expertise to prospective students since they get to read about the experience first hand.

Also, remember to be patient with yourself on your first classes. Deciding to be a freelance tutor is quite a plunge and you should take it step by step. Supeprof is here for you!