Not good. If I was a tutor, I would do stick to private tutoring - find clientele on craigslist or care.com
Pros
Not much. I enjoyed the people I worked with, minus a few who have been there a long time and think they know everything there is to know about how to teach. They have a lot to learn about multiple learning styles, especially in low income areas. I did appreciate the planning period where I could get some of the million paper-work/busywork sheets that they make you do. Every tutor will tell you this is the most tedious system ever. The E.C's are allowed 3 events a semester where I think 3 tutors are allowed to go to events such as basketball, football, volleyball games, etc. to show support for the school and earn hours. This is probably the only altruistic thing outside of normal pay that Sylvan has done for its tutors. Although, it's only for 3 tutors, and only for 3 events.
Cons
When they claim that you'll be working "full-time" you should inquire about exactly how many hours you'll be getting. Full time meant that we ran on a school schedule for the school we worked for so we only averaged about 33 hours/week. This meant that I was making about the same I was making at my previous job I left when I saw the ad for "$15/hour plus benefits to tutor math." It's a huge scam in the grand scheme of things when they are making $80+ an hour per kid at the Sylvan Center itself and no telling what they're charging the schools for push-in or pull-outs. Either way, it's a monopoly and we're not getting the good end of the stick. They give you "tokens" as an incentive to ensure you've signed in/out correctly and they can be redeemed for $5-10 gift cards when you achieve a few hundred, which would take months. It's all based upon whether you enter your time correctly in three different spots - once on a sign in sheet, once in their ADP system, and once where you have to check the ADP system and the sign in sheet with a Google document. Horrible system if you ask me. I would rather they fix this system of clocking in/out and instead of giving me some bologna tokens, give me a bonus or more pay instead like real companies. For Christ sake, you give the students the same tokens - are we your students/children too? After you enter all of your students grades and behavior "grades" on paper after each lesson, you also have to spend your time putting them in online. This system needs some work. Lessons are not planned out well - people teach however they want so when tutors are absent and kids are with other tutors, they get behind on work and don't understand what's going on. We have absolutely no authority over the students, so kids can come to class and act a fool and we can basically do nothing about it because the principals and AP's aren't doing anything to stop it either. Our E.C's realize this and let the really bad kids sit at their table and do no work, while everyone else does moderate amounts of work. Tell me how this system is good again? Oh, right. It's not. Discipline needs to be enforced here. Management doesn't follow the rules of absences - the rule is "as long as you let your E.C. know 24 hours in advance of your absence it becomes their problem, not yours" - well it has happened to me and others before where our boss has told us, "sorry, I need you to work, I can't find a tutor for you." They give you 5 absences total - your entire lifetime with Sylvan. I think that's kind of ridiculous if you ask me. I was sick 1 day during the holidays and went to the doctor 2 of those days. I went to an interview for 1. By the time I left Sylvan, after being there for only 3 months, I had used 4 of those absences. They say they'll have a "talk" with you about letting you go after that, but honestly, they're constantly hiring new tutors because there is such a high turnover rate, I doubt they'd fire anyone. Also, be aware! Schools in Austin have lots of planned in teacher development days and holidays, and recently snow days - which means you WON'T be getting paid for those days. That also affected my pay a lot. Sylvan doesn't really do anything about this because they don't seem to really care about their tutors like they claim to. If they did, they'd host an inservice for tutors, planning future lessons, going over methods to remain consistent, or do something to give tutors hours.
