Photo by Katerina Holmes
Today I finally enjoyed one of the benefits of working independently of a formal employer. I got fed up with a client who was petty and belligerent and fired her.
I started my own tutoring business and experienced immediate success in attracting clients. I am positive and good at what I do, and my students have always been able to learn easily from me.
I had a very difficult client who kept telling me how to teach her child. She wanted me to use special flashcards and she became bossier than I could stand. I realized this was why I created my own business: to be able to fire a bad client.
She was rigid and controlling and had no specific education. She thought she knew better than me. I tried to discuss our different points of view, but she wouldn’t budge. She wanted me to use a teaching method I knew was not good, and she had never taught in her life.
It is frustrating to deal with adults (I understand if it is their child) who don’t know what they don’t know. Parents have scolded me for not doing their child’s homework. They know nothing about teaching. How on earth will their child learn? When teaching in school, these parents are nightmares because we must be polite even if the parent knows nothing — and there are many of those.
Teachers need to take charge and not be ordered around by less-educated adults or people who know nothing about teaching. Also, sometimes the principals will not take a stand with parents. They are weak with the parents but happy to order around the teachers. The students are the ones who lose out.
Please let people know how much freedom working for oneself gives a person. Anyone who teaches can independently tutor children. There are many clients waiting out there, and experienced teachers are far better teachers than parents who teach their own kids.
Parents pressure their children and too easily traumatize them. It’s true that a little information in the hands of someone with no professional experience can be the worst situation for children. Sure, as tutors we run into stubborn, uneducated parents, but when I work in my own tutoring business, I can end the teaching relationship — something we cannot do at school.
Often, you can continue teaching at a school and easily find students to tutor. I know teachers who worry about not getting enough long-term jobs to make a living, but those worries are not based on reality. Some schools have good benefits, but some do not. I want teachers for all grades to feel the freedom I now feel.
I was so scared to leave the school because of losing benefits. I should not have listened to those people, and I wish I had left sooner. Don’t let others scare you into staying at a school where people are authoritative and difficult. Have confidence in yourself and you will see the difference it makes in your life.
