High turnover. 7 of my co-workers left within the year. There was a point in time where every 2 weeks another tutor will quit for a new job, graduate school or burnt out and need to leave. More workload for the other tutors and that will decrease morale. SAGA does rehire new tutors to fill in the void but only up to a certain point. Had to take up extra workload during the last 2-3 months of the year when a tutor left.
There are really no advancement if you are looking to stay as a tutor. You can only advance if you become a site director and assistant site director. The pay is decent for those two spots but is awful if you stay as a tutor. Your pay will be tax considering the the low amount it is already, don't be surprised to lose about 20% of it.
There really is no benefits as you will have to pay out of your own pocket. Maybe the health care but i didn't apply for it as it was better to stick to a family member healthcare if you can. The Transit is something that you pay out of your own pocket. i learned that the hard way. You get a card to use to buy a metro card or transit fees with, it comes out of your own pocket or what they call pre-tax income.
Upper Management change their goal or direction every month, i do not think they know what they want to do. There is a big disconnect and lack of communication between Upper Management and middle management. We don't get fill in on what we need to do in advance. Something new might pop up randomly and we have to implement that immediately.
The materials they give us sometimes are full of errors. Also their are materials in there that have nothing to do with what the students need to know to pass. Tutors do not have a clear idea on what the mission is, SAGA does have one but i am not even sure if it the real mission anymore. It is good to teach students advance materials but we are working with a demographic that are struggling in basic math. Teaching them the basic is already a challenge in itself.
Tutor burnout is real. Coming in first time on the job is a different experience from leaving. When you begin you are super excited and committed to make a big impact on the education system. The first few months if you don't pace yourself, you be exhausted and burnt out. Saw a lot of this happened to my myself and my co-worker. At the end of the year, morale is low and everyone is exhausted, the only thing that keeps us staying is the students. Want to see them through until it is over. I expect the Upper Management knows this and is one of the tools to keep the tutor staying at least for the full year.
The 37.5 hours per week that the company try to tell you is not true. You be working more than that due to inputting data into their database, filling out dailies, calling parents, grading, lesson planning and other tasks. To be fair it will average out to about 43-45 hours or so. They say to do all that during work but tutors are not actually given enough time to do all that, most of them do it at home. The work balance life is pretty good considering the vacation time to relieve stress. Just be aware you might actually be working more than 40 hours a week and not being paid for it. If you want to be an effective tutor, then you will easily go over the 37.5 hours per week work limit. Due to lesson planning and making sure i know the material before teaching the students among doing other tasks, i easily went over the 37.5 hour threshold, more like 45 hours each week. I am pretty sure a lot of my colleagues went over the 37.5 hours per week workload.
the 2.5 hours is the time you get to eat lunch each week. 30 minutes each day. This is partly due to the 45-48 minutes per period. 15 of those minutes are suppose to be used to call parents, inputting data and what not. Though the tutors should get the full period off to recuperate.
There are no breaks between periods. You be teaching 4 periods straight before lunch and 3 periods after lunch. Lunch is the only official break you get. There is no breaks in between unless the students do not show and then you are require to look for them, then you can use the restroom really quickly. We don't get periods in between to lesson plan or do other stuff. Students constantly coming in and out each period. This is why a lot of the task are done at home because there is very little time to do them during work. Either do them after work or at home.
Don't be surprised to be going the limit of the 2 students per period workload. Many times tutors will have to take on 3 or 4 students at once in a period especially if we are understaffed. I had to take on 3 students at once and even 4 (rarely happened maybe once or twice but it does happen). It might not seem much 2,3,4 students at a time for people who haven't work in teaching or education, but every student has a different math level and learning method. It is not easy to manage teaching 4 students or even 3 students at a time because one student might be super high math level and 1 is low. One is rowdy and is daydreaming while the other one is talkative. Getting them all focused and on the same page will be a problem. Also you do not know if one student is having some conflict with another student and putting them at the same tutorial space will be a problem. 2 students is manageable because there are many different tips and strategies you can use to maintain the tutorial. It also depends if the 2 students you have work well and complement each other. 2 students can be a handful if they don't work well with each other as i have experienced.
This is what i experienced myself, there were 3 locations to choose from, 2 in Bronx and 1 in Brooklyn during the time i worked there. Not sure what they have planned for the 2016-2017 year. They might have changed the way they operate or maybe only a little but i dont think they will change much. To be fair it also depends on the school that you be working in. The schedule the school operates on. Most of what i wrote will still be relevant especially if SAGA will be working with the same schools.
This is not a career if you are living in a state such as New York where it is expensive and if you have student loan debt. Thankfully i had none and could of done this. You do make a difference in the student lives, can encourage them to take school and learning more seriously, help build their confidence, and make them change their outlook at life even if it a little. This is mostly a gap year position if you want to take a break from university before going back to graduate school. It s really not a bad place to work if the pay was a lot higher despite all the cons. Too bad i don't see the employer raising the pay of tutors as they can always hire new ones every year.
