Instead of becoming a teacher in a school or a professor at a university, a lot of people are taking their skills to individual students or small groups of students and becoming private tutors and teachers.
If you know Spanish and are interested in becoming a private Spanish tutor, here are some of the steps you'll need to take to make a success of it.
Master Spanish
One-half of teaching or tutoring is a mastery of the subject that you're teaching. What "mastery" means is relative to what and who you're teaching. For example, if you're teaching beginners Spanish, you won't need to even be fluent in Spanish, but it certainly would help.
Mastery, in this example, only really means knowing more than your students so that you have something to teach them. We could go on for days about how much Spanish you need to know, but to be honest, as long as you know more than your students, you have something that you can teach.
However, because we all like our tutors to have some level of expertise, here are some of the ways you can assert your expertise to potential students.
If you're not sure about learning Spanish, there are plenty of reasons you should.
A Degree in Spanish
To assure students that you know what you're teaching, a degree is a great place to start. Having studied Spanish at university shows your students that you've committed several years of your life to master the language that you'll be teaching.
The same is true of postgraduate qualifications so if you chose to continue your studies beyond your undergraduate degree, make sure that your potential students know this.
This is also important as you'll know what you're talking about when teaching your students Spanish.
DELE
You can get recognised Spanish qualifications without going to university and the DELE (Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera) are qualifications from the Spanish government that recognise someone's ability in European Spanish.
If you're not helping school pupils or university students in your private tutoring sessions, you might be helping students prepare for the DELE.
There are also qualifications issued from other Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina's CELU and the SIELE, which is another qualification issued by Spain but with a more international slant.
Immersion
You can also learn or improve your Spanish through immersion. If you have spent time in a Spanish-speaking country, you'll likely learn the language or improve your Spanish language skills. It mightn't be a formal qualification, but you can let your Spanish language skills do the talking as a private tutor.
From Other Private Tutors
Before you become a private tutor, you could learn Spanish from a private tutor. Not only will this help you to develop the Spanish skills you need to tutor other students, but you'll have a better idea of what a private tutor needs to do in terms of their teaching approaches.
Don't forget that learning Spanish can help in other careers, too.
Learn How to Teach
The other half of becoming a private tutor is to learn how to teach. It's all well and good having mastered the Spanish language, but if you can't effectively share your knowledge with your students in a way they'll understand and retain, there's no point in becoming a tutor.
It's worthwhile studying pedagogy (the science behind teaching, basically) and different teaching approaches so you have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon.
Your job as a private tutor will be to present the information in ways adapted to each of your students. They can get a generic Spanish class elsewhere, what they want from you is bespoke and tailored sessions so that they get the most out of every minute they spend with you.
Teaching Qualifications
While private tutoring isn't the same as teaching classes in schools or universities, if you've qualified as a teacher, you'll likely have a good understanding of pedagogy, teaching approaches, student management, etc.
If you already have a formal education or are a qualified teacher, you'll likely have a pretty good idea of how to become a private tutor.
Learning from Other Tutors
The tutoring community is open and welcoming and since most tutors work independently, they're quite happy to help out other tutors with resources and advice.
Look for tutoring communities online and you'll find resources, activities, lesson plans, advice, and a community that's ready to help you get better at teaching.
Learning From Your Students
When it comes to pedagogy, know your students. Get feedback from your students on activities. After all, the sessions are only worthwhile if they find them useful. Regularly check on them to see how things are going or which things need to be changed.
Your job as a tutor involves adapting your lessons to each student and if you want to make sure that it's working, all you have to do is ask them!
Learn How to Find Students
You can't become a private tutor if you don't have students and finding students is often the most difficult part of becoming a private tutor.
There are a few ways to go about this, but if you want to find a lot of new students, you'll want to be using a combination of every method you can.
Finding Students Online
Thanks to the internet, it's never been easier to find students for private Spanish lessons. You can look for students in student forums, tutoring websites and platforms (like ours!), or through social media.
You can also set up your own website for students to find you, see how you can help them, and get in touch with you if they're interested in private tutorials.
When you're looking for students, you can never do too much advertising so make sure you have an online presence and you'll start finding students.
Finding Students Locally
While the internet is great for finding students, if you're not offering online tutoring, you may also want to find students that you know you can get to. You can still find local students online, but a great way to find students in the real world is by making it so that they can find you there.
You can put up posters, advertisements, etc. for your private tutoring (always ask first, though!) and if you go to the right places, you'll soon have students getting in touch and asking to arrange sessions.
You could even ask to speak to a class of Spanish students in a school. After all, you're offering a service that could help them perform better in their exams and make their teacher look better. It's a good idea to remind certain students that help is out there and you're the person to offer it.
Make Sure that You Retain Students
Finding students is important, but keeping students is even more important. Naturally, you won't be able to retain every student forever as some will have set goals for their Spanish and once they've achieved them, they'll no longer need you as a tutor.
However, you won't want a revolving door of students constantly coming and going and only taking a few sessions with you. Finding new students and organising sessions often takes longer than organising sessions with your current students and you'll unlikely be paid for this time.
Ideally, having a schedule full of regular students that you can count on is better than regularly having to look for new ones because they're no longer wanting private Spanish tutorials.
The easiest way to retain students is by offering them value. If they enjoy your sessions and are learning from them, they'll stay as long as they need you.
How to Set Your Rates as a Tutor
How much you charge is an important part of running a successful tutoring business. Your rates will be one of the reasons that you find new students and keep your current students.
Furthermore, your rates will need to be enough to pay your bills and, ideally, leave you with some nice disposable income to spend on things you like.
One of the easiest ways to set your rates is by checking out the competition. Pricing tends to work on supply and demand so when there are a lot of students and very few tutors, rates can go up. When there are more tutors and fewer students, you'll have to charge more competitively.
You can usually charge more than the going rate if you have more experience or teach at a higher level. When you first start out as a tutor and you're still building your reputation, you'll likely need to charge less to entice students to give you a try.
Offering a free session, especially if your lessons are excellent, is a good way to get students through the door and once they see how good you are, they'll be happy to pay for your private Spanish tutoring.
It can also be a good idea to offer a discount for students that pay for several sessions at once. That way, you'll know that you have these sessions in the bag and won't have to look for as many sessions to fill.
Give it a go and let us know how it works out!
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