After the article on why teacher almost perpetually comes the next article on how teacher. Once you are ready to become a teacher then the first thing you need to decide or discover is how you are going to get your students as well as how you will teach your students. This article can be taken as a sequel to my previous article on "Why should You Become a Teacher?"
In the previous article, “Why Should You Become a Teacher”, I have discussed about full time or part time teachers. If you choose teaching as a full time career then you have options to join a school or college. Doing so will guarantee you good earnings for you and your family.
Schools and colleges are also of 2 types, government and non-government or private. If you can secure a job in any government school or college then your salary and security both will be higher than private ones. But it is not easy to get a government job. Especially in our country the number of posts is too low compared to the number of candidates.
Other than the government ones you have options for private schools and colleges. If you cannot find yourself a government job then you can opt for searching in the private institutions. There are mainstream schools and colleges as well as many technical and vocational colleges in the private sector. You can even find many renowned engineering, medical and business schools.
Other than schools and colleges, there are many other options of teaching as well. In this article we will focus on those specially. Most of them offer dual possibilities, that is you can take it as full time or you can do it as part time. These options are less complicated than getting a job in a school or college, especially in the government ones. But as far as the question of earnings and satisfaction, these options often give even much more than being a teacher in a school or college. Let us see some of those options in a little detail.
It is Easiest to Get a Home Tutor Job
You are already on a website which specializes in home tution. And I am writing all these articles and blogs on behalf of this home tutor consultancy website. Being a part of KridhaTutor Consultancy, I can assure you that being a home tutor is perhaps the easiest way to become a teacher. All you need to do is to prepare a right biodata which will display all your subject skills and respective certifications (preferable) and then register yourself with a home tutor consultancy agency like this one KridhaTutor Consultancy.
These consultancies constantly keep stirring the student market with their marketing techniques and strategies, in the process gather valuable leads which they can convert with the help of the respective teachers. The process of registration and engagements as tutor may slightly vary from consultancy to consultancy but they all are the same at the core concept and base level of operations.
You can find many such consultancies on the internet. Don’t forget to search according to your convenient city and locality. Every consultancy does not work in every city and they can have their respective geographical boundaries.
So this was an overview on how to get a home tutor assignment. And it is really quite easy and you will find the same as you will try it yourself. But don’t take it granted that getting a home tutor job and being a home tutor essentially means the same. Being a good home tutor is not as easy as getting it. I have seen plenty of home tutors who find it hard to maintain or keep up their job assignment up to a satisfactory quality.
The reasons are very obvious. In some cases the tutors lacked good knowledge and skill in their domain subject. And in other cases they are pretty good and strong in their subjects but their teaching skills are poor. So to become a good home tutor you will need 2 skill sets, one is expertise on your subject and the other is efficiency as a teacher.
Home tutors need some special teaching skills in order to handle the intricacies of highly personalized training interactions with the students. The skills are different from a standard school or college teaching as they are actually not that much personalized. A school or college teacher would need different skills like crowd control and mass pedagogy.
Home tutors also need liaison skills with guardians and parents much more than any other form of teaching. This has its own advantages and disadvantages and being a home tutor you have to know to handle them both. Getting a home tutor assignment is easy but the earnings are not usually at the level of a school or college teacher. Though I have seen many home tutors doing it as a full time job supporting their own families with their earnings in a quite efficient manner. So if you take up the right method and strategy then you can always do better in this sector.
Coaching is the Great Going
Coaching or tutorial homes are those small classroom setups where more than one student attends a personalized class as a backup study facility to the regular school and college classes. This can be an easy short definition of a coaching class or tutorial. Let me explain this a bit.
First let us pay attention to the phrases like “small classroom setup”, “more than one student”, and “personalized class”. As in the case of a home tutor also, only one of the phrases is applicable to both and that one is the “personalized class”. But as home tution converts to coaching class the other two phrases also find their places. And exactly in these terms the differences lie.
By personalized class what should we consider in case of a coaching or tutorial? It is the same as we understand in the case of a home tution. This is the most compelling reason for attending any home tution or coaching classes beside the regular school or college classes. Otherwise why should a student attend extra classes paying extra money?
Almost every student needs personalized classes for their convenience in studies. Good students need them to excel whereas mediocre and bad students need them to survive. In home tution one-to-one sessions this type of personalized approaches are easier and evident. But in many coaching and tutorial setup we find a lack of consciousness of its exact purpose and thus becomes just like another school or college class.
Next term is “more than one student”. This is the case where a coaching or tutorial significantly differs from a home tution class. In home tution, there is one student and one tutor in a one-to-one class session. But in coaching or tutorial there are usually many students and one tutor in class session.
More than one student but never too many as in a school or college classroom. This is an intrinsic characteristic of a coaching or tutorial center which is signified by the phrase “small classroom setup”. Thus on one hand it is personalized and on the other hand it is one-to-many class sessions. And to keep balance between these two contrasting features, the count of “many” is usually to be kept quite low for facilitating better personalized attention and learning assistance.
Financially a coaching center is a perfect win-win for both the students and the teacher. As more than one student is accommodated in a class session so the students get price benefits whereas the tutor gets even better remuneration than a home tutor by summing up the total collections from all the students. Thus by time factor and price factor, teachers are highly benefited in the coaching or tutorial home system.
Online or Offline
This is another very crucial choice for this time. Already education technologies and standards were shifting trends from the advent of desktop and laptop computing machines, smartphones and portable fast internet. But nothing could have accelerated that faster than the current situation of Covid-19 pandemic. Today online is becoming the compulsory channel and the offline system is getting optional.
More and more universities, colleges and schools are spending time and money to build up online class infrastructure and expertise. In the future we can expect that online classes will become a bigger trend than offline ones, and everyone will be using the both modes in combination which you can call hybrid or blended systems.
Today, in any case of home tution or coaching class, there are two options, one is online and the other is offline. Both have their respective pros and cons. And you can select one according to your comfort and convenience.
If you are a part time teacher who remains busy with other schedules, then online teaching can provide excess benefits and ease in terms of time and labour. You can give a single home tution class or group coaching class with the help of many learning management and video conferencing applications available both for computers or smartphones. One such example is Google Meet offered by Google Inc.
When you are in some other profession or job then arranging time and energy for offline home tution or coaching class can become an extra overhead for you. You may think and feel that the goodness of teaching that you can reap will get consumed by the exertion and exhaustion from the classes. Well it is not that your anxiety on this is illogical or baseless. But then, nowadays you have the better option of online teaching.
In online teaching, you save exhautions and consumption of resources due to travel, you can take the classes right from your home at your convenience. It is true that often online classes fail to deliver the qualities of a good offline class, but with a good concept and understanding of the online education technologies you can make a difference. Adopting and implementing suitable and effective standards as well as innovative solutions wherever necessary will give you a sharp edge to your teaching and mentoring.
If you are a full time teacher then also online classes can become beneficial for you and your students. Or you may find it easier and more natural in the traditional offline mode. It will be your choice on which mode you would like to teach. And you have to search for your students accordingly. All of your advertisement campaigns and home tutorial website registrations are to be well directed and targeted to your purpose and respective prospects.
Being a full time teacher, the question of quality pedagogy is much more a stringent question. Online classes are not beyond doubt in that perspective. It can become a great challenge for you to deliver the same or equivalent quality compared to traditional offline modes.
But help is also available more than before. Today you have better infrastructure than ever before. And with passing days, there is very impressive growth and enrichment in the infrastructure consisting of various technologies and resources to support and conduct better online classes.
In the online class system you also save valuable time and money needed for commutation. You also save on classroom expenses as you can take your classes directly from your home. All these and more factors can motivate and inspire you to deliver better online class sessions and scale your pedagogy to new heights. In return that will establish better branding opportunities for you and you will be rewarded with more and more students. This way your profession of full time online tutoring can become very successful and lucrative.
In such an inspiring environment, you can invest and acquire better online class delivery technologies at your home. You can construct an online class studio with better audio-visual capabilities. You can also use any good Learning Management System (LMS) for the purpose of better course material and content delivery and better assessment possibilities. Proper assessment is one of the most important aspects of education and development of students.
Blended or Hybrid Teaching is the Future
Everything in this world changes with time. This we cannot bypass or avoid from our life and work. But we can try our best to keep the changes in the positive side. Changes can bring good as well as can bring bad. And as change is constant or highest probability then we should try to opt for changes that bring the good and avoid changes that can bring the bad.
The same should apply in the domain of education and tutoring as well. Development in technology and the pandemic of Covid 19 brought many changes in the world of teaching and studying. I cannot say that all the changes are good or positive, but optimally we should try to eliminate the bad or negative ones and adopt the good or positive ones.
In this context, online education and teaching is such a change. But it is not totally a good change neither totally a bad one also. It has its pros and cons. We need to be very critical and meticulous in accepting and adopting this change and try to eliminate or avoid the cons as much as possible. In the same line of thought, the world of education is coming up with a concept that they call blended learning or sometimes hybrid learning. So what is that exactly?
Mixing online education and traditional offline education in appropriate proportions so that we can keep the old benefits of the offline education as well as harvest new benefits from the online education system. Researches are going on worldwide to study the various parameters and procedures of such a mixed or blended or hybrid education system.
Now you may ask why I am discussing this issue here. I have got compelling reasons for doing so. This new type of education system is going to have remarkable significance and implications in all the sectors of the education system of our country including all formats of teaching and learning. And whatever type of teacher you are, part time or full time, school teacher, coaching teacher or home tutor, the blended teaching system will have significance for you also.
Being a teacher beside another profession or being a teacher as a dedicated profession, time is one of the most valuable and scarce resources that you would find on your path to success. Also your mental and physical energy will be as valuable and scarce. Hence conserving and properly utilizing your time and energy will be an important issue throughout your life and career as a teacher (and most probably in all areas of your life and work also). The same applies to the students also (at least ideally).
Online education and its modified version of blended or hybrid education address these kinds of time and energy issues very efficiently and effectively. Saving valuable time and energy for commuting, providing you the comfort and pleasure of working from home and more, adds value to your precious energy and time. And this is exactly what online education provides. It also makes your prospective market wider and easier to access for you.