WillTutor.org

Business Mission:

The company’s prime mover is to provide quality tutoring lessons for reasonable rates that each client may think worthy of another’s choice and, thus, refer us to another for similar services.

General Context Description:

The industry background of tutoring as a service has its roots at the dawn of civilization, notably with Aristotle as the paradigmatic tutor of Alexander the Great, teaching his pupil curricula of wide breadth and vast scope, ultimately leading to success in terms of the pupil’s intentions. Tutoring continued through the Renaissance and brought attention to the correspondence form (e.g., Descartes and Princess Elizabeth’s tutoring via epistolary exchange on metaphysical topics such as the possibility of mind-body dualism). Those paradigms of tutoring as service, however, are not reliable for understanding how tutoring works today qua service for high school students (and WillTutor’s customers are usually grades 9-12).

Tutoring in the twenty-first century in the United States takes a different form from its earlier developments largely because of the advancements in technology that have enabled the tutoring industry to reach more audiences than ever before. Tutoring services tend to stand divided based on the audience for whom proprietors and/or corporate owners market the service(s). In the literature on tutoring as a profession, the consensus holds that there are two main options for tutoring platforms as businesses. The first is the franchise based company that bifurcates into learning centers (e.g., Huntington Learning Center, Kumon), on the one hand, and independent contractors as tutors, on the other. WillTutor has employed the latter approach for its tutors in that the company has had its business come partly from WyzAnt Tutoring, Parliament Tutors, TutorSpree, and other companies. Some companies (e.g., Champion Learning Center) specifically cater to low-income populations and receive federal funding due in large part to the No Child Left Behind programs. Tutoring has also been reputed as a service for low achieving students who are falling behind in whichever subjects they seek private instruction. Tutors today, however, are “now being used far more to [1] guide students through particularly tough courses, [2] insure their grades are equal to or above their peers’ and, in the end, [3] polish a child’s college application.” In this way, tutors are sought out in much the same way as tutors were traditionally sought out in the above description.

WillTutor addresses this contemporary student who seeks tutoring in subject-matter that challenges his or her reasoning abilities in quantitative, verbal, and languages other than English. Because parents and individual students themselves seek out tutoring beyond the hard cast mold of tutoring the cognitively and/or economically disadvantaged, the market for tutoring services has expanded and, thus, it is no surprise that spending on tutoring increases each year, as executive director of the Education Industry Association Steven Pines reports, “more than five percent a year.”

In what follows I sketch out a picture of the different segments or platforms by which tutoring can proceed as a service. These include the online medium/modality, the in-person (in-home, in public venue, etc), and the combination of the two.

The online format is accessible to clients who are interested in tutoring lessons with subject-matter as ancient languages, symbolic logic, calculus, proofreading, and English Language Arts. (WillTutor has provided services for clients in these subject areas and has experience with handling their respective curricula.)

For all subjects does the in-person tutoring lesson provide an opportunity for clients to work hands on with a tutor. The two main platforms for in-person tutoring are in-home services and public venues. For the former, WillTutor insists on conditions, stipulations, provisos that lessons must be conducted under – largely for the safety of both the tutor and the client. (Compare WyzAnt In-Home Tutoring’s similar guidelines and stipulations.) The public venue options include either public or private libraries, classrooms, student centers, university campus junctions, and other areas that allow for tutoring lessons.

Tutoring via phone is an option for clients interested in essay writing, having papers proofread by WillTutor’s tutor(s), ELA (more generally), reading classical languages, and ESL. Combined segments of online tutoring (e.g., Skype, Vyew, White Board) and phone allow tutors and clients to engage in both platforms simultaneously; this allows for two to yield more than one. In most instances, some sessions are conducted solely online, others solely over the telephone with Skype. WillTutor has conducted lessons in the ancient languages (both Greek and Latin), symbolic logic, calculus I, proofreading, GRE: Analytical Writing, and other subject areas via this mixed segment option; our clients have found this method of tutoring paradigm satisfactory.

I like tutoring the subjects that I tutor because it helps me keep together a business.