Working with three kids ranging from all ages at one time can be very difficult to handle, not to mention each child is not getting individualized attention. Hourly pay is extremely low considering they are making hundreds of dollars off of you each hour. I would consider my position at Sylvan as more of a glorified babysitter, if you are actually trying to further your child's education, I would never suggest sending them to Sylvan. For the same money that you would spend on one hour at Sylvan, you could pay a private tutor and receive multiple hours of individualized attention for your child. They only allowed 5 minutes each hour to record detailed reports on each child, and prepare for the next hour's session, which can be next to impossible when you are teaching three kids at one time. They expected you to be there 10 minutes early and leave 5 minutes after your shift had ended, meaning they would only allow you to clock in for an extra 15 minutes each shift, which underestimated the time you were actually there setting up and putting everything away. I also noticed that my director would go into my clocked in time after I had recorded it and round down the times that I had put in. For example, we had a meeting and I clocked in for the exact time I was there, which was an hour and 15 minutes, later I noticed that my director had gone in and changed the time I had been there from an hour and 15 minutes to one hour. I received checks for mileage for driving to the satellite centers, however I would not receive them until a month later. At the end of each month, I would send them a record of all of the miles I had driven for that month, and would have to wait until the end of the next month to actually receive my compensation for those miles, which is pretty ridiculous when I had spent over $200 in gas alone and could not receive reimbursement for that until a month later, while expected to waste another $200 in gas during that month. They would send out the schedule on Friday for the next week starting on Monday, which was not enough time in advance. I also had an issue with how the directors would speak to me about scheduling and last minute changes. For example, they would send me an email the hour before on the day of a session and say something like, "There was a mistake on the schedule and you were supposed to be scheduled from this time until this time." Meaning they would tell me an hour before I was supposed to be there, and expect me to be able to change all plans I might have had, in order to be there for the extra hours because of these "mistakes on the schedule". I would have much preferred if they would have asked, "can you pick up these extra hours?" rather than telling me there was a "mistake" on the schedule they had sent out the week before. Clearly, there were never any mistakes on the schedule, they were just trying to maximize their profit and took on extra kids last minute for sessions, and expected me to be incredibly flexible. Another complaint I had, was that they would schedule me for only two hours at a time, which was hardly worth the gas money to drive there and back. Also, on several occasions, if one kid would cancel last minute they would send a tutor home and move kids to another tutor in order to maximize their profit once again. On several occasions, I would get to the center and the director would tell me that they forgot to tell me my session was canceled and not allow me to clock in. Long story short, if you tell them you are available at all times, they will take advantage of you. I used to pick up shifts and cover for people last minute all of the time, and the one time I needed someone to cover for me, in the year I had worked there, because a family member had been taken to the hospital, I asked two hours before my short 2 hour scheduled session if someone could cover for me, and was told that there was nobody and I had to go to the session. I understand that I was scheduled, however, I figured that since I was expected to come in for extra hours that had been tacked on with less than an hours notice all of the time, that they would be able to find someone else for this one exception. Another complaint I had was I would be expected to teach reading sometimes because they would not want to call in another tutor and have to pay them for their time. I am not a certified teacher, and have no experience teaching reading whatsoever, but I was expected to do it, which is not only unfair to me, but also to the parents and children. Overall, I would say if you like getting taken advantage of and receiving a small paycheck, a tutor position at Sylvan is the job for you!
