It can sometimes be quite difficult juggling my family life and my working life. I suppose it doesn't help that I am based at home. There are so many advantages to working at home: I have everything here at hand, my commute is non existent, I am here if the children need me. However I am also having to rescue our four chickens from neighbour's gardens or retrieving the poor things after they've been chased by a dog. Also dealing with frightened lambs who have somehow managed to make their way into my garden but then can't get back into the field. Not to mention removing large spiders from children's bedrooms.
On balance though, I am very happy working away here looking out over the open fields watching the chickens and lambs interact and watching the sheep chase off our kitten when he tries to stalk anything in their field.
This time of year is my favourite time with everything growing in the garden and the promise of summer. However it is also the busiest time with regard to tutoring. There just aren't enough hours in the day to satisfy the needs of various pupils who want extra lessons before their all important exams. Also to be able to answer the phone to new enquiries and spend the time making sure that the tutor I place them with is the most suitable for them.
I love to tutor when there is a fixed goal to aim for - it is immensely rewarding helping someone to achieve their academic goals and often to surpass their expectations. Just recently when the last GCSE results were out it was great to learn that Tamsin had passed her GCSE Maths particularly as she had missed so much school due to illness She was over the moon as were her parents - it was a privilege to share in that success.
Most of my own tuition is maths but as the summer progresses the balance switches to more and more 11+ work for Ripon Grammar entrance exams. I suppose it is my logical brain but I really do enjoy working through the 11+ papers, so much so that I've had fun writing some of my own. Some of my year 5 pupils are really quite little characters too and I enjoy my hour with each of them.
In August, I am taking on a huge personal challenge, which is to ride 100 miles (102 actually but who's counting) in and around London. I am doing this with Phil, my husband, and we are trying to raise as much money as possible for Leukaemia Research. We are busy planning a science activity session on 30th July. All of the money raised is going to the charity but I have to say we're really looking forward to the day - there will be lots of hands on experiments, some of which are going to be explosive! I am, however, a bit more concerned about the bike ride. I need to train (and train a lot) but I'm too busy. Perhaps if I commuted to work by bike that would count as training - but I work at home!
Friday, 10 May 2013
Monday, 12 December 2011
Why am I writing a Blog?
I have been providing my own maths tuition for about 7 years. I have found that I really enjoy tutoring and that it is something that I am very good at. I have always loved maths and the satisfaction of helping children to overcome a subject that many of them lack confidence in is great. I love the interaction with young people and enjoy working with them to reach their goals. I have been surprised about the spread of pupils that have wanted tutoring, some of them struggling with the basics, whilst at the other end, some just needing to secure that A* grade.
I soon became completely full with a waiting list and was being inundated with yet more requests for maths tutoring and also asked if I knew of tutors for other subjects so about 3 years ago I launched Chatterton Tuition. I had worked for other agencies in the past and found that there were apects to these that I thought was unfair. I decided that Chatterton Tuition had to be the type of agency that I would have worked for. The commission rates are low and we do our utmost to make sure that the right tutor is placed with the right pupil. We are all independant, we have our own tutoring styles, different personalities and we realise that this is the same for all our pupils. Despite the ongoing recession the business has flourished and there continues to be a big demand for tutoring, especially in maths. Most of the enquiries that come in continue to be by personal recommendation. Whilst this is great and business is growing, I can't help feeling that there are more people out there that just haven't found us yet.
This is why we have now joined Facebook, Twitter and now blogging. My intention is to blog about running my own business and the juggling that I have to do to fit in with my own family life.
At Chatterton Tuition our main business is tutoring. We currently have well over 100 tutors on our books and numbers are still growing. Only last week I was chatting to a new tutor who wants to tutor Health and Social Care - a fairly new subject that is becoming more popular. We have tutors who cover nearly any academic subject that our schools offer.
Since launching Chatterton Tuition I have learnt many new skills and am adding to these all the time. In particular I have had to learn about website design and am continually trying to improve the website to make it more readable and to improve its ratings in the search engines. Today I have been adding more A Level Maths pages. I have several A level maths students who I tutor and have written detailed worked answers to some of the past exam papers. I'm told that these have been really helpful, they are now all available for free on the website www.chattertontuition.co.uk/A-Level-Maths-Papers I suppose it is fairly sad to say to that I have really enjoyed writing them. I am planning to have a go at Core 3 and Core 4 too. The answers aren't a problem, it is getting it all set out in the word documents that is harder especially with diagrams and mathematical language - yet another learning curve!
I soon became completely full with a waiting list and was being inundated with yet more requests for maths tutoring and also asked if I knew of tutors for other subjects so about 3 years ago I launched Chatterton Tuition. I had worked for other agencies in the past and found that there were apects to these that I thought was unfair. I decided that Chatterton Tuition had to be the type of agency that I would have worked for. The commission rates are low and we do our utmost to make sure that the right tutor is placed with the right pupil. We are all independant, we have our own tutoring styles, different personalities and we realise that this is the same for all our pupils. Despite the ongoing recession the business has flourished and there continues to be a big demand for tutoring, especially in maths. Most of the enquiries that come in continue to be by personal recommendation. Whilst this is great and business is growing, I can't help feeling that there are more people out there that just haven't found us yet.
This is why we have now joined Facebook, Twitter and now blogging. My intention is to blog about running my own business and the juggling that I have to do to fit in with my own family life.
At Chatterton Tuition our main business is tutoring. We currently have well over 100 tutors on our books and numbers are still growing. Only last week I was chatting to a new tutor who wants to tutor Health and Social Care - a fairly new subject that is becoming more popular. We have tutors who cover nearly any academic subject that our schools offer.
Since launching Chatterton Tuition I have learnt many new skills and am adding to these all the time. In particular I have had to learn about website design and am continually trying to improve the website to make it more readable and to improve its ratings in the search engines. Today I have been adding more A Level Maths pages. I have several A level maths students who I tutor and have written detailed worked answers to some of the past exam papers. I'm told that these have been really helpful, they are now all available for free on the website www.chattertontuition.co.uk/A-Level-Maths-Papers I suppose it is fairly sad to say to that I have really enjoyed writing them. I am planning to have a go at Core 3 and Core 4 too. The answers aren't a problem, it is getting it all set out in the word documents that is harder especially with diagrams and mathematical language - yet another learning curve!
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