The Love Tutoring Festival is a celebration of tutoring in all its aspects. It is an exciting week-long online event for tutors and people looking to start a career in tutoring. The five day event runs from Monday 28th June to Friday 2nd July.
Education Boutique is thrilled to be involved in this year’s festival. Our Founder and Director, Lucy Spencer, will be co-leading a CPD accredited workshop on Small Group Online Tutoring. Then to cap off the week, on the first World Tutors’ Day, Lucy will be undertaking a unique tutor challenge: Teaching 24 lessons in 24 hours! This will involve Lucy tutoring students online from every continent and all to raise money for the amazing charity Creating Better Futures.
To find out more and support a great cause follow the link below:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/educationboutique
Last week we were fortunate enough to interview the Love Tutoring Festival Director, Ludo Millar.
EB: How did the concept of this week-long online tutoring festival come about?
Ludo: The Love Tutoring Festival was borne out of a sense of duty to serve tutors. This year, our profession has been more relied upon than ever. Tutors have been brought into our schools with the National Tutoring Programme (NTP). Parents have turned to tutors to support remote learning. In many cases, students have also relied on tutors to support their mental health and wellbeing.
Here at Qualified Tutor, we decided that, amongst the flurry of other festivals (mostly music and arts) being organised for this summer, tutors weren’t going to miss out.
The themes for each day fell into place very neatly. We begin with Special Educational Needs & Disabilities (SEND) & Mental Health on the Monday because this is central to the safety and support for both tutors and students in today’s tutoring industry.
The next day focuses in on an area that many tutors feel they need greater support in:
the business of tutoring. How to market, how to get more students, how to find and keep great clients and tutors, how to run that incredible tutoring business you’d always dreamt of.
Tutoring has at its core the foundations of teaching and learning. If we as tutors cannot master this area, then no amount of interactive learning games and outdoor sessions will be truly effective. And we’ve put on quite a line-up here …
No 5-day tutoring event this year would be complete without an exploration of the NTP, its main players and what the lessons have been.
And finally, we build towards a new global initiative to celebrate the work of tutors: World Tutors’ Day. On Friday 2nd July, the final day of the festival, we will be hosting events that aim to honour the work that tutors do, both across the days of the festival but also every single day.
EB: What can people who enrol for the festival expect?
Ludo: The culture of the festival will be one of inclusivity, wellbeing, professional development and, more than perhaps anything else, participation. We want all attendees to leave with a sense of solidarity and connection with fellow tutors and educators.
The structure of many of the events provides for collaboration and discussion. With breakout rooms and plenary sessions built into the content, you’ll have the chance to have your voice heard while learning alongside like-minded professionals.
Of course, there’s an event for (almost) every tutor.
If you’re an ex-teacher turned tutor, we recommend the Wednesday morning For Teachers who Tutor CPD-accredited workshop (The CPD Certification Service is the recognised Continuing Professional Development body in the UK and you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion shortly after the festival).
If you’re looking to get into tutoring a Special Educational Needs & Disabilities student or you’d like a refresher, we have events lined up for dyslexia, dyscalculia, chronic disengagement and more on the Monday (28th June).
And if you’d like to find out more about the tutoring cultures, norms and market-drivers in India, South Africa, Canada, Singapore, the US and more, then our International Tutoring Roundtable on Friday 2nd July at 2pm BST will go a long way to opening your eyes to these huge tutoring markets.
All tickets can be explored and registered for at qualifiedtutor.org/lovetutoringfestival.
EB: If people can’t attend the live sessions, are they able to view/watch at a later time/date?
Ludo: Of course. All events will be recorded so, as long as you’ve registered for a ticket (paid or free) and you’ve found your place in the Festival Hub within the Qualified Tutor Community, you’ll have access to all events, workshops and discussions forever.
EB: What is the best advice you can give to someone who is looking to get into tutoring as a full-time profession?
The truth is that, in today’s tutoring environment, you have to demonstrate your commitment to professionalism in order to succeed. I’m not saying that every tutor has to set up their own business, but even if you’d like to make some money on the side during your undergraduate years, parents are expecting a minimum standard of professionalism of their tutor.
This is particularly true if you’re looking to get into tutoring as your full-time profession. I would start by narrowing down the range of subjects and topics you’re willing to offer.
You would do well to sit down and think carefully about exactly which subjects, topics and ages you can cover. Not just theoretically what you could successfully tutor someone in, but what in practice you want to be covering in detail several times over in a single week (maybe even in a day!) to several different students – ie. what you choose to tutor has to be something you want to dive into again and again in a short space of time with different students.
This differs from classroom teaching as the curriculum moves fast, you move on quickly, each topic is covered in (scarily) little detail and you teach ~25 kids at once.
EB: There isn’t a single student whose learning has not been impacted by Covid-19. What does this mean for accountability and responsibility in tutoring?
Ludo: Firstly, it’s important to lay out that a student’s academic struggles cannot be laid solely at the feet of the tutor, who’s agreed to support the student in whatever they can. A student’s education is about the myriad factors that impact their life: their school, their upbringing, their level of parental support and so on.
Having said that, if we truly wish to promote tutoring into the mainstream of education across the world, we have to make tutors understand their importance in this system. And part of this means taking responsibility for their own teaching. This is not something that should daunt tutors, but rather empower them.
The positive impacts of tutoring have been found on many levels and within several key studies. Let this guide the work we do, particularly in this difficult time for students.
Ensure you commit fully to every session, as we cannot expect students to give 100% if we aren’t ourselves. The same goes for ensuring you are prepared for every session. And finally, leave time to discuss the wider effects of what’s been going on in school and in society in the past year. Tutoring affords an hour (usually) in which you get to interact with a young person’s life – don’t let the professional barrier get in the way of an open and honest conversation.
This specialised and targeted relationship- and confidence-building exercise may well be the legacy of tutoring from this pandemic.
To find out more about the Love Tutoring Festival visit: https://qualifiedtutor.org/community/love-tutoring-festival/
Brooke McClure, Lead Resource Teacher at Education Boutique