An interview with Doctor of Psychological Sciences, professor, academician of the Russian Academy of Education Vladimir SOBKIN to Teacher's Newspaper proves: school has finally ceased to be the place where students receive the knowledge they need for future life and education. A group of scientists led by an academician conducted fundamental sociological surveys. And here are the conclusions:
“To a large extent, preparation for a university, victories at Olympiads, high scores on the final state exam and international tests are provided not by the school itself, but by people “from the outside.” The school simply takes credit for their merits.
In addition, you need to understand the price of the issue. For example, if we take the price for tutoring services in Moscow at approximately 1,500 rubles per hour (although in reality it can be 3,000, 5,000 or more rubles), if we remember that the matter is not limited to one hour a week, and many schoolchildren study with tutors in two, three or more subjects, the result is an astronomical amount. And this is all on top of what the state officially spends on education.
And yet the state recognizes this problem. Let me remind you that the following figures were recently announced in the Public Chamber: 92 percent of parents believe that the Unified State Exam requires special preparation, 41.7 percent responded that when preparing for the Unified State Exam, additional tasks at school are necessary, and 52.9 percent turn to the services of tutors and They pay quite a lot of money for them.
And here are a few more interesting facts. Poorly performing schoolchildren study with tutors noticeably less often than well-performing students. Paradox? It would seem that if a student is already studying at “4” and “5”, why does he need additional classes? the more necessary who switches from “2” to “3”! But no, it's the other way around.
Previously, we bashfully kept silent about this fact; it was considered indecent to say that the school still prepares for university, and this is one of the main tasks set for it by parents. However, the statistics are inexorable - pragmatics comes to the fore, we can state: yes, the university is still too important for us, and the admission rate must be taken as the main one in assessing success. These are precisely the requirements of the family today as the main customer of educational services. Therefore, if the school fails to cope with this task, a powerful resource of tutors is activated...
Tutors are very critical of the closed system of financial incentives for teachers at school. They themselves understand everything - one hour costs so much, during this time I guarantee such and such a result. But in educational organization It is not always clear who pays whom and for what.
There is also a place for real injustice here, since schools very often take credit for the achievements of others. If children win at some All-Russian Olympiad or competition, the school victoriously reports on how well they work with different categories children. And few people are interested in remembering that tutors worked with them for extra money from their parents’ pockets. It’s better to say that this is the merit of her school teachers, and usually no one speaks publicly about “private owners” kind words won't say...
Tutors more often than simple teachers, strive to give students solid knowledge and demonstrate to them high standards of mastery of the subject. This, by the way, is quite logical: I set a high bar and show that I myself meet this standard. But here’s the detail: tutors admit that much more often than ordinary teachers, they strive to give students the opportunity to express their point of view, teach them something new, and develop diligence and conscientiousness in them. They try to identify the real problems and interests of students, but at the same time they themselves strive more strongly to win the respect and sympathy of students.
A real tutor always understands that he will not be able to prepare a student well if he puts only the material aspect first. The pedagogical courage associated with communication during the lesson is also very important to him. Hence the joint analysis of tasks, discussion of solutions, demonstration of one’s own intellectual abilities, Feedback in the form of an opportunity to express their opinion and so on.
In a word, it is deeply wrong to accuse tutors of just chasing big money. In fact, self-realization is very important to them, although in a slightly different way than what is usually talked about when addressing a mass teacher in a Moscow school.
The motives for creative activity among tutors also lie in the desire to diversify the content of professional activity and not work according to a template, in the desire to personal growth, in the desire to move to a new level of professional development and receive financial incentives for this.
According to the HSE Institute of Education, the shadow market for tutoring services in Russia amounts to almost 30 billion rubles.
For the query “Tutors in Russia,” the Yandex search engine returns 57 million results.
“I’m stopping working with children”: shocking revelations from a professional tutor
Nowadays, tutoring is flourishing - no one sees anything wrong with inviting a person to “keep up” with a child’s school curriculum, so such specialists are in great demand. And for some reason it occurs to no one that the fashion for tutors is the most striking evidence of the gaping failures in the Russian school education system.
A post in which professional English tutor Maria Kovina-Gorelik talks about the peculiarities of her work, relationships with children and parents, as well as her attitude towards school studies.
This post is dedicated to the work of a children's tutor from the perspective from which I see it. It is addressed primarily to parents of schoolchildren (current and potential).
In general, children are terrible clients. If only because they, as a rule, do not study in the summer. From the reverse side, it looks disgusting: in May, a wave of last-minute calls brings tutors who are dead tired from the year, but in need of work, to the websites of tutoring services.
In September, my phone number can receive up to three applications a day; in May, the site kindly reports that 112 colleagues responded to an interesting order before me. For a tutor, this means that all year he needs to carefully save some money for the summer, but with the onset of summer it turns out that just now (and only now) he has time to go to Ikea, get a massage, get his teeth fixed and do a lot more absolutely urgent matters. Savings are dwindling by July. August is going by gloomily.
This alone is enough to make requests to take another child on board not seem so harmless. If you occupy your entire schedule with “children,” the summer can turn out to be more than dull.
But this is so, an economic prelude. Secrets of the profession. I'm sure many would not like to delve into this at all, but I see some benefit in revelations. I want people who ask me or another teacher to “work a little” with their Katyas, Vasyas and Petyas, to “slightly improve the program” to understand well what they are asking for and respect other people’s work, time, schedule, refusals and motives of these refusals.
You must understand that a tutor never works in a vacuum. He works closely with parents and school, and the child in all this rigmarole takes last place, but should take first place. In principle, this says it all, but I know that it is not clear. So I'll continue.
Parents hire me as a qualified teacher and expect high professional qualities. Common assumptions about my professional qualities look something like this: I know the language well, I can talk about it in an interesting way, I know the techniques, I know the manuals, and I also know how to find an approach, interest, and generally do all this incomprehensible magic that will finally make their child do homework or just understand something.
Parents expect me to recognize what the problem is with their child specifically and to help resolve the problem.
These are logical expectations and are consistent with the qualifications available. However, this is not important, it is important due to what, what fuel, thanks to which I can do all this. And I know how to do this through subtle listening, seeing and understanding, which, alas, cannot be limited.
And this means, dear parents, that I will see, hear and understand a lot not only about the connection “child - English”, but also about other related connections, for example, “child - parents”, “child - school”, “child - environment", "the child - himself", "the child - the level of his intellectual, emotional and mental development", "a child is his hormonal background" and so on. This means that I will see far more than just what you want me to see.
If a child has red flags that are outside my area of expertise, I will see it. If a child is developmentally delayed, I will see it. If a child is physically or emotionally exhausted, I will see it. And if you mistreat your child, I will see it.
I tell you three real cases. I didn’t stay in any of these houses: in the first two cases I left on my own, in the last one they parted with me with the wording “You are too good for us” (this is not a joke, ladies and gentlemen).
1. A boy, 11 years old, was invited to improve his Russian and English. Typically, he asked for a tutor himself because he felt that he was lagging behind and couldn’t cope. A wonderful family, three boys, they recently got a cat. The relationship is warm, the boys have a separate room, good conditions. The child studies in an elite school, and he studies there every day from 9 am to 6 pm: in the morning - compulsory lessons, in the afternoon - endless drama classes, modeling, additional physical education and other poetry to the accordion. I came at 7, and we studied until 9.
After two months of training once a week, I took my mother aside and said that, alas, we were not progressing, and that, in my opinion, the load should not be increased, but decreased. That is, at least cancel me to hell. We parted amicably.
The situation is far from the most critical, but there is a complete misunderstanding of physical capabilities, norms and limitations. Mom is a psychologist by training, but for some reason she managed to overlook the dark circles under her beloved son’s eyes.
It is difficult for an 11-year-old person to realize that there are compelling physiological reasons for his lack of understanding. It can’t even enter his head that HE, YOUR MOTHER, IS FUCKING UP LIKE SIDOR’S GOAT TO GO TO SCHOOL EVERY DAY FOR A FULL DAY!!! And that it shouldn't be this way.
The final touch: on spring break the child was sent to London. Learn the language. Of course, what else to do during the holidays?! Rest? Lounging around the house, playing with your brothers and cat? Go to museums? To children's shows? Why, if you can go with strangers to an unfamiliar country, where you can move around in an organized manner while the teachers shout and finish learning what you haven’t learned in a semester. We give the child the Best Education that he can get. Including any tutor who asks.
And he will ask. More than once again.
2. Hired to tutor my brother (11–12) and sister (16). In total, the family has four children, a large apartment, signs of wealth and well-being. Fashionably dressed kids play around in a pile of toys. Both students speak well, although the boy visibly fidgets and constantly corrects himself, and the girl is all nervous and stutters a little. In the second lesson, the boy suddenly cannot say literally anything, all attempts are confused, he rocks on his chair and repeats “I don’t know” and “I can’t do it” like a parrot, the state is close to hysterical.
My gentle approaches from different ends bring no results. I'm calling my mom. The child, realizing that he will now be discussed, runs out of the room in tears and shouting: “I tried, but I didn’t succeed!”
I gently try to explain to the mother what is happening to her son, without using dangerous words from the field of psychology and emphasizing that the situation is beyond my competence as a teacher. That the child needs help (URGENT, FUCKING!!! QUALIFIED!!! PSYCHOLOGICAL!!! HELP!!!)
She perceives this in her own way, and literally tells me the following: “I, of course, understand that you are paid to teach the language, and not to tame such subs.” Then she puts pressure on me and manipulates me in every possible way, but since I have seen some episodes of her and the father’s treatment of children, I hold firm, knowing that I will not work in this family.
The mother leaves the room with the text: “Well, this is what you’ve brought to this. They are abandoning you!”
I leave the apartment under a heart-rending HOWL. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the belt came into play that evening.
If we had at least some social services, I would have reported this family. But they do not work, just like the school and many other state and social institutions. But in Moscow there are more than 10 thousand tutors in my subject alone. How many times do we go to someone's house and see something like this? And do we see it?
3. They persuaded me to work out with a girl (they wanted me, negotiated with my mother for a long time, and in the end I decided to take her).
A tiny Khrushchev building, and inside there is a picture of frozen time: a carpet on the wall, an icon on the carpet, a million porcelain figurines, napkins, plastic roses in a vase. An environment that makes you want to fly up, stripping naked and washing yourself in the rain. At home, a grandmother who, over the course of several meetings, describes her life in approximately the following terms: “what a time it is,” “I raised three people,” “35 years at school,” etc.
During class, the doors don't close, grandma walks back and forth. The girl is 12 and barely speaks. In no language. She especially doesn’t say anything when Grandma’s route takes us past our table.
For an hour and a half, with a wet back, I put on a puppet show for the girl, funny pictures, best friend children and other polyphonic studies, because the girl is silent. From time to time I cling to a semblance of a twinkle in my eyes. I squeeze out a few not hopeless words from her.
After a couple of lessons, we begin the innocent topic of “Family,” and from the confused explanations, I drag out the following into the light of day: the girl has a mother, stepfather and brother, with whom she does not live. She can’t make up her mind about her brother, whether he exists or he doesn’t, and I, completely confused, am forced to ask again several times in every way in different languages. Because I don’t immediately understand how this is possible.
And then I understand. I understand that the girl’s mother has a good computer and a plan to go to London together in March (and on this score, the grandmother, who has been “at school for 35 years,” gives me valuable pedagogical advice: at each lesson, memorize several useful expressions with her granddaughter just in time for the trip).
But the mother herself is not there. Mom lives with her beloved man and brand new son. And the girl lives among icons and napkins with her grandmother, whose brain has gone askew and is stuck in the post-war period.
And at home I’ve been trying to somehow come to terms with the situation for two weeks, although I want to scream for a long time. Call your mom and scream. Put grandma in the hallway and scream. But I pull myself together, because I think: maybe the Lord brought me there on purpose, so that somehow? To show the girl that there are other human species? What difference does it make, well, yes, through the English language, since it happened like that. Will I be able to? I don't have an answer to this question.
So far, the girl is afraid of absolutely any of my proposals, which is not surprising for a person who is afraid of the sound of her own voice. And here is my whole self, I have red lipstick, I am smiling. And I'm not afraid of anything. But after a couple of weeks, my grandmother herself calls me and says that I have an excellent technique and they are completely satisfied with everything, but the girl is too busy, so they decided to hold off on the language. And I sigh with shameful relief, heavy as lead.
Your girl has no problems with the English language.
And she doesn't have a mother.
What the hell kind of English is there?! What is London like?
The horror is that absolutely all these people are sure that they love their children very much. They do the best for them. And everything in their family is in order, and if not in order, then still not everything is completely bad, and in general it’s none of my business. I was invited to teach English.
ROOM FOR PAUSE AND READER REFLECTION
A short note: I have wonderful children as my students. We have been working with them for a long time and productively. They have normal parents - not ideal, no, there are also nuances, but normal. However, it's not just the parents, so let's move on.
It’s somehow awkward to talk about how the school has degraded over the past decades. Firstly, I didn’t work there and would never go there, and to criticize something that I didn’t succeed in and didn’t even try is below the belt. Secondly, so much has already been said that it’s sickening.
But this does not change the essence. School doesn't teach anything. Suffice it to say that I have three students from one specialized English school, where they learn English 7–8 hours a week. And they need a tutor. Just think about these numbers, it’s complete madness!
The terrible truth is that I cannot completely reinstall them on normal human rails, because over the course of ten years the school has etched ruts inside them, from which nothing can then be pulled out of them. And no matter how much my parents hope that I will teach them to talk, I will not teach them. This can be done if you tear them out of the school’s perception of reality, and you can try to do this in the summer, that is, during the period when there is no school.
But in the summer, as I already wrote, they don’t do it. Summer is sacred. Let's kill ourselves to the point of intestinal volvulus during the year, and we will kill ourselves in geometric progression so that by the end of the 11th grade, for the Unified State Exam, we will crawl in a really dangerous state under the arms of tutors in all subjects taken, but we will not touch the summer. Just when it would be possible to make a qualitative breakthrough, disguising it as a pleasant pastime, with films, songs, and other human activities, etc., we will not allow even 3 hours a week to be allocated to lightly recharge the rested and fresh brain.
In several issued after verification tests I found incomprehensible places and asked: “Didn’t you come to clarify what was meant here?” - to which the child answered me: “I am convinced that it is better not to ask questions.” Some were outright mistakes on the part of teachers (English schools, yes). But in general, if anyone doesn’t know, verified tests and other work are now usually not returned. Of course, there is no need to know what exactly your mistake was; your job is to know the score and try to improve it in your next attempts. How? As you wish.
They still learn topics and retell them in class. For example, about the Indians. As I remember now, one of the heroes of the text was called POPOKATEPETL. I remember another topic about Moscow City. Like how many meters is the Federation Tower? After this, they are surprised that the children speak poorly. WHAT SHOULD WE SAY HERE IF THIS IS SOME kind of CIPHER THAT IS COMPLETELY UNUSED FOR NORMAL HUMAN PURPOSES?!!! And what can I do with my three hours versus the school’s eight? But of course I try. And, I must say, I am succeeding, although with great difficulty.
However, parents' expectations, as a rule, are dashed against the rocks in this place. Therefore, I will say directly and clearly: dear friends, if you want your child to succeed in a subject at school, then the safest way to achieve this will be to act in parallel with the school according to its guidelines, which I personally will never do, because I cannot. Organically.
If you want your child to speak at least someday (this most likely will not happen at school, more powerful shocks are needed here than three hours a week with a tutor), then you can hand him over to me, I will turn his brains into the right direction side, and when the school headache loosens its grip, he will have the opportunity to plant further language learning on more or less sensible grounds.
This is all that I can do, because all other “good” results are achieved either through drill and violence, or with initially different initial data.
Make sure that he simultaneously does well in an average school with its crazy requirements and ill-conceived formats, and speaks fluent, good English on really relevant, life topics, impossible. This equation will NEVER converge.
They do not know how to think here and now.
They do not know how to use sources and reference books.
They do not know how to use the known to find out the unknown.
They do not know how to combine information, draw conclusions, compare, and generalize.
They don’t even know that “I don’t know” can be followed by any actions other than “sit down, two.”
The minimum difficulty leads them to a completely inoperative state (the nuances are rich and correlate with their personal characteristics: someone is furious, someone is desperately stupid, someone every time feels the collapse of all hopes, someone throws all their strength into maintaining the illusion of their own consistency ). At this moment, they are busy with anything other than English, and I spend time, attention, and energy to breathe normal life into them.
By the way, it is inhaled ONLY after such moments, experienced differently than through tugging, appeals to conscience and other common teaching techniques.
I tune it all, like a huge harp, and then they go to school, where they tune this harp for me.
11th grade is worthy of special mention. Now I have two adored dolls in my hands, they will be released soon. To say that their intellectual abilities have declined is an understatement, but I have known them for 3 years.
The girls look like seaweed in raspberry syrup and don’t think a damn thing. They yawn from monstrous fatigue, besides they are in love and losing weight. All tables are covered with pieces of paper with mathematical formulas, historical facts, quotes from Pasternak and hearts with a more frivolous content. They get either a migraine or a stomach infection. I feel incredibly, incredibly sorry for them.
At school all year they do absolutely nothing except run through the Unified State Examination form, although it’s a no-brainer that the test format can only be a test format, but not a training one. I repeat like a mantra: “Sleep and cartoons,” but they don’t listen. They are completely unable to study effectively, but they cannot do anything other than study until they are completely glazed over.
Half-deliriously, they rush to repeat three types of conditional sentences (and repeat, by the way, not without success, because this is an understandable pattern that they can cling to). But they are completely powerless to describe the furnishings of their room or a picture from the fairy tale “Cinderella,” as well as to give birth to another thought of their own.
Parents enthusiastically stir up everyone's nerves. They ask me: “Do you think she will pass?” “It will,” I answer confidently, realizing that at least someone needs to stand exactly in this field of crazy feather grass. It would be better for the children if it were their parents, but who knows. Maybe if they knew how to do this, there would be no need for me at all.
A feeling of total, widespread disconnection and ill health. Parents do not fulfill their functions. The school is not fulfilling its functions. The tutor comes to this and tries to do something. In fact, he is defeated - because with my capabilities and knowledge, with support and fair winds, I could achieve results with these children that I can only dream of now.
Therefore, for the near future I will stop working with children. I'm tired to death of fighting at windmills, seeing things that hurt, getting blows for doing what other people don't do. I like kids. I know how to work with them. But with my parents and school, no, and I probably won’t study. I'd rather wait until these kids grow up and understand what's what. Actually, these are the people I work with at the moment with great pleasure, finding in almost every adult a child who was once tortured for a long time and in a difficult way.
But I no longer have the strength to look at this in real time.
And a couple of recent episodes from our NON-school life.
1. My daughter, returning from a walk with a new boy she knew, spoke about their conversation on topics outside of school: “When he found out that I was studying at home, first he said that it was cool, and then - that they are not prepared for the Unified State Exam at all, they themselves think what to do". Question: who needs such a school?
2. Today we wrote a “ministerial” test in Russian. The text of the assignment was compiled by “very special people”)) There are gross errors in Russian in the Russian assignment. In some places the wording is so confusing that it is not possible to complete the task with full confidence that you understand what “the author wanted to say.”
The Village continues to find out how the personal budget of people of different professions works. In the new issue - a tutor. Teachers are looking for clients on websites or in in social networks, or they contact themselves after hearing positive reviews by word of mouth. A flexible schedule allows you to combine tutoring with other work, although in any case the income will be unstable: in the summer there are significantly fewer students than in the height of preparation for exams. On average, a private lesson in mathematics, physics or English costs from 900 to 2 thousand rubles. However, not the entire amount is sent to the tutor’s wallet: specialized sites with a client base often charge a commission, and part of the money has to be spent on moving between students. A graduate of an economics university from St. Petersburg, who worked as a tutor for three years, spoke about finding students, sleepless nights and competition with teachers.
Profession
Tutor
Income
45,000 rubles
+15,000 rubles
help from relatives
Spending
15,000 rubles
flat rent
9,000 rubles
5,000 rubles
personal care
8,500 rubles
entertainment and hobbies
9,000 rubles
travel expenses
2,500 rubles
commission for new students
3,000 rubles
household items
8,000 rubles
savings for the summer
How to become a tutor
This year I studied to become an economist at one of the top universities in the country. Before that, she graduated from a serious mathematics school in her hometown, participated in olympiads, and devoted a lot of time and effort to mathematics. For the last three years I have worked as a tutor, combining teaching with study.
I came to St. Petersburg to study, and in my first year the money issue became acute. At first I worked in the service sector, but the money I earned there was barely enough for food and the most modest entertainment a couple of times a month. In addition to the desire to lead a more relaxed lifestyle, money was needed to rent an apartment. The dormitory of my university is located outside the city: the journey to the faculty took an average of 2 hours and 15 minutes. My parents helped a little, but the money they sent was only enough for the cheapest apartment in Devyatkino.
The work took a lot of time, and problems with studies began. I started looking for a new place: I wanted something more intellectual than working as a salesperson. Most of the vacancies were eliminated due to a schedule that was impossible to combine with studies, as well as due to the lack of completed higher education. Then a friend advised me to try teaching. I didn’t really believe that I would be able to make money doing this all the time. To gain at least some experience, I conducted several classes with my nephew, and then registered on specialized sites. Now I have accounts on five or six such sites, but in fact there are only two working ones. The first one is the most popular, they charge a commission equal to the cost of the first lesson. The second has the largest base of teachers and students, the commission there is twice as large. Many tutors I know don’t like him, but, in my opinion, it’s better to overpay for a student and have the opportunity to choose with whom to study, than to grab any order.
Features of work
Usually I find an application from a client that suits me on the website and respond to it. If the administrator thinks that I am suitable for the order, then he sends me the contact information of the parent (sometimes the child himself), and we agree on the first lesson. After the first lesson, I report to the site about the results and pay a commission. At this stage, the site forgets about me. There are times when the client chooses the tutor himself, which, of course, is nice. I very rarely find students through friends, perhaps because in my environment there are no families with schoolchildren. Students themselves rarely recommend tutors to each other, even if they are happy with everything.
The vast majority of children want to start classes between 16:00 and 19:00: by this time they have time to come home from school and have a little rest. This way, I manage to cram two one-and-a-half-hour classes into one evening if the students live close to each other. Some children can only study in the evening, most often they also have other activities, such as art school. Typically, such children have excellent time management: thanks to them, they can fit in not two, but three classes a day.
Some tutors accept children at home - you can get more done without wasting time and money on travel. I practiced this format for some time, but then abandoned it. Too much a large number of strangers in my own apartment bothered me.
When I was at university, my schedule was quite intense. Every April and May - the time of preparation for exams - I generally worked without days off, greed spoke to me. Although alone interesting feature allowed me to find time for myself and rest a little: children are still quitters and really like to cancel classes.
A few years ago it seemed to me that tutors were not needed at all. How surprised I was to learn how much this specialty is in demand! Most often, tutors are hired to prepare for exams or to help improve grades, less often - to prepare for Olympiads.
It is much more pleasant to prepare for exams, but pulling up is more difficult. Usually, things are so bad for students that six months is the minimum that needs to be spent restoring knowledge and developing some kind of self-confidence. I have several examples of children with whom I had to study for a year and a half before getting them to the mark. Last year I began to practice free trial classes, but not for marketing purposes, but to be able to weed out inadequate clients or too difficult children. The percentage of completely hopeless people has become smaller, but they still remain.
It is difficult for a child to achieve results and get grades; it depends on the mood of the school teacher. Usually, children are simply labeled as “C” or “B” - and grades are given based on this. And I must bear responsibility, although not one hundred percent. But it is almost impossible to change the teacher’s opinion. During my work, I have accumulated more than ten examples of students who passed the Unified State Exam and the Unified State Exam with fours and fives, but whose grade at school was between three and two.
I try to communicate with all my students as with friends: our age difference is not that big - from two to nine years. In my opinion, this is more effective - the guys have a pleasant and interesting time doing it. Of course, there are also disadvantages: some children sense my weakness and sit on my neck, and this is not always immediately obvious. In addition, I am very worried about their success, sometimes much more than the children themselves. This April I had a crisis: I could wake up at 4 am worrying about one of my careless students. I even started to develop neurodermatitis, which I had never had before.
I communicate with children’s parents much less than with students. Many people are not at all interested in what is happening to their child and what progress he is making. Although there are cute and caring mothers. A big plus of working as a tutor is the virtual absence of management. This role seems to be performed by parents, but there are many of them, and there is always the opportunity not to work with a specific family without losing income.
The saddest thing in my work is the realization of how poorly the school works. I got the impression that in the vast majority of places, teachers have no interest in students at all. The guys say that almost everyone in the class now has tutors. The modern school curriculum implies that the teacher explains something somehow, and the child gets into the essence with a tutor. Gaps in children appear already in elementary school: 90% of my students did not know the multiplication tables, and I taught mostly high school students. Not being able to add and multiply fractions, open parentheses, or solve quadratic equations in the 11th grade on the eve of the Unified State Exam is generally a typical picture. At some point, I stopped being surprised that children count on their fingers. Around the same time, I stopped thinking that I would be left without students. The school seems to be designed so that any graduate of a more or less decent math school can earn money.
I strongly disapproved of teachers until I tried to get into school myself. I was thinking about getting a job at a quarter rate: for such employment I was offered 3,750 rubles before deduction of personal income tax. With such a salary it is difficult to do anything well, and I have no idea where to get the love for children.
Income
Most often, math classes last one and a half hours. At the beginning, I charged about 800 rubles for 90 minutes. Now this is a minimum of 1,200 rubles for the same time, orders for 1,600 rubles are considered profitable.
I never had a shortage of students, even when I was a student. A week could cost 10 or 15 thousand rubles. Although the income is so unpredictable that it is impossible to name the exact amount that comes out per month. I keep records of income and expenses in order to somehow control cash flow. About 480 thousand rubles come out per year, that is, approximately 40 thousand per month. In April and May, money simply pours out of my pockets; things are much worse in the summer - there are almost no students. The first summer was the hardest, for the second and third I decided to borrow from my grandmother. I repaid the debt in the fall and now I take such features into account in my accounting. In addition to money from tutoring, my parents and grandmother give me 15 thousand rubles a month.
Spending
Money from relatives is spent on housing and utility bills. The next expense item is food. I spend 4 thousand rubles on groceries, and about 5 thousand more on lunches. I don’t understand why it works out so economically, because I constantly snack in public catering and choose whatever I like. I guess I just don't eat very much.
Every month I get a manicure, it costs 1.5 thousand rubles. Sometimes I go to a cosmetologist or for a massage. My skin is difficult to care for and I need specialized creams. I spend about 800 rubles a month on them and occasional purchases of medicines. I can buy some cosmetics, shoes or clothes and spend 10 thousand rubles at a time. Although then I don’t buy anything for a month or two.
Due to my busy schedule, I rarely go out to have fun somewhere special. I've only been to a bar once in the whole year. I go to visit my cousin and buy gifts for my nephews. To relax, I go to a cafe with my girlfriends. Sometimes I go to museums. To my favorite Museum of Political History, admission for students is cheap - 30 rubles. Sometimes I go to small theaters like the theater on Vasilyevsky and to the cinema. I spend the most money in this article on gifts for family and friends - about 3.5 thousand rubles per month.
For several months this year I visited a psychologist, and for a couple of months I had a vocal coach. Then it took about 4 thousand rubles a month. Now my only constant hobby is sewing, I sometimes spend money on fabric.
I spend about 4 thousand rubles on travel outside St. Petersburg. My boyfriend lives in Moscow: sometimes I can come to him without warning, in which case I buy tickets myself. In the fall I was with my parents in Tenerife, we paid for my flight in half.
City transport also costs a lot. A BSK pass costs about a thousand rubles a month, minibuses and taxis cost another 4 thousand. I save on taxis first of all, if there is such a need.
I put washing powders, dishwashing liquid, light bulbs and other everyday expenses within 200 rubles in the “small purchases” section, which comes out to a thousand rubles a month. Previously, I spent about 1.5 thousand rubles on mobile communications, I recently changed my operator and now I pay 600 rubles. It's a shame I didn't do this earlier. A separate budget item is for new students; I can pay from 1 to 3 thousand rubles for an order. I save the remaining money for the summer.
I don’t have any loans: being so busy, it’s difficult to get a credit card, and even at a normal interest rate. Besides, if there's one thing I learned from university, it's that you can't take out personal loans for things that won't generate income in the future.
No one is immune from mistakes. Beginning specialists - even more so. But in some professions: engineer, doctor, teacher and others, mistakes can be costly. This article is an attempt to give some tips that may help you avoid these mistakes.
1. Lack of self-confidence
As the saying goes, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Coming to a lesson for the first time, any tutor should make a positive impression, and a beginner - threefold. Excessive anxiety of a novice tutor (shaking hands and voice, obsessive movements) can make a strange impression, which he still has nothing to smooth out, in contrast to a teacher with experience, to some of whose features one can, in principle, turn a blind eye.
Self-doubt and fear of not being liked by the student can force the tutor to build an incorrect line of behavior with him - with “flirting” and erasing the necessary distance in the relationship, which, in turn, will weaken his authority and allow the student to work half-heartedly. You cannot go to the other extreme, putting on the mask of an evil teacher, prohibiting and threatening. The mask will sooner or later come off, revealing your true face, and this will allow the student to behave with you without any respect. Before going to class, do a little exercise, take a deep breath, raise your head and smile at your reflection in the mirror. You have enough knowledge to convey it to others, charm to please people, and confidence to remain yourself when people try to confuse you.
Don’t be late for class, but if you feel that you still won’t make it on time, be sure to call: no one will kill you for the very fact of being late, and by calling you you will leave the impression of at least a polite person. Don’t take on all the offers in a row: while your rate is low, traveling from one end of the city to the other you will spend half of the money you earn on transport, the time during which you could teach another lesson, and the energy that you, of course, still have will be needed.
2. Unsystematic classes, lack of expressed requirements
Even before the start of classes, you must form a certain set of rules that are common to everyone, and later supplement it with points that are constant for a particular student. For example, I strongly recommend that many students have several notebooks at the very first lesson: for recording various kinds of theory, for tests and for homework. Moreover, if you start them, you and the student should teach them at every lesson, and not when you accidentally remember about it. The student also needs to be taught order: he should always know where his notebooks and books are, prepare them in advance and not lose them. Losing an assignment, from the point of view of a careless student, is a very valid reason for failure to complete it. Therefore, if you study not from textbooks, but from various handouts, recommend that the student create a special folder for them. Get yourself a diary or some kind of journal: it will be convenient to write down the material covered, homework and mistakes of each student, which you think should be worked on next time, since you will keep all this information in your head, especially when You will have a lot of students, it’s not that easy.
You must clearly and clearly inform the parents of the students about the cost of classes, the days and times that suit you, the requirements for the child, your position regarding the cancellation and postponement of classes, and also subsequently promptly inform parents about the children’s bad behavior or failure to complete their homework, do not allow they have to ride on themselves and say goodbye to them without regret when this starts to happen.
3. Lack of lesson plan
It is a mistake to think that good knowledge of the subject allows you to not prepare for the lesson. Especially if you are still at the very beginning of your journey. It is necessary to draw up a plan in which you indicate exactly what you will do during the lesson and how long it will take you to complete each item. But the plan cannot be treated formally. No matter how simple the material may seem to you, you need to study it very carefully, noting to yourself the ways of explaining it (the more, the better: one is always not enough), possible difficulties of students and ways to overcome them, possible answers of students to oral and written tasks. In addition, you should always be prepared for the fact that a student's homework may not be completed or completed incompletely, so instead of quickly checking it and starting new topic, you'll have to do something else. Thus, the plan should provide for several options for developing the lesson. The time to complete the plan items must be calculated in advance and distributed evenly, without delving into any one task to the detriment of others. It is completely unacceptable to interrupt a student in the midst of completing a task simply because you yourself did not calculate how much time it would take him.
4. A unified approach to different students
If you are a beginning teacher, then most likely you have not yet developed an extensive methodological library, and now it is important for you not to be afraid to learn new things. Different students have different problems and different goals, so you should use different textbooks, and not just one or two that are best known to you. Spend time searching for and pre-evaluating materials so that you don’t waste time later on something that the student doesn’t need at all. Subsequently, to make searching easier the required material on a particular topic, it will be possible to compile a catalog of available resources.
5. Unwillingness to answer questions
Active, interested students are a real gift for any tutor, but a headache for a beginner. Surprises await you at every turn: for example, if you are teaching a foreign language and, while studying the topic “Professions,” you ask a student what their parents do, then please do not expect that everyone will turn out to be teachers, engineers or doctors. A foreign language teacher may be faced with the problem of a student’s specific interests that lie outside his linguistic competence, and therefore experience difficulties in translating a particular term (aircraft parts, dance figures). In this case, it won’t hurt you to familiarize yourself with this or that category of vocabulary, but let the student know that you cannot know everything and push him to make independent discoveries. In turn, in a physics lesson, a student may have his own alternative view of the cause of some natural phenomena, and you must put yourself in his place in order to understand his point of view and clarify any questions.
6. Lack of restraint with slow students
On the other hand, students who do not think so quickly require great self-control from the tutor, because you should never yell at them, even if you really, really want to. Screaming and swearing frighten children, block their thought processes and give rise to complexes. Even if you have to explain the material in twenty-five different ways, before the student understands what they want from him, try to treat it positively. You are a super teacher if you know twenty-five ways to explain one topic, and Indian yogis would envy your patience! Besides, in the end, you will still achieve your goal, and the gratitude of such a student will be much higher.
A novice teacher, student or yesterday's student may be in some euphoria from receiving new professional knowledge or a new status and sincerely want to teach the student everything at once. With such generosity, he can do harm rather than good, disrupt the student’s picture of the world and make him doubt the teaching system used in this subject at this stage, especially when it comes to elementary school. A second-grader, like his name, learns that one cannot divide by zero, but if the tutor casually informs him that this is not entirely true, then a misunderstanding with the school teacher and a decrease in grades are guaranteed. The other extreme is to generally avoid any complexity and terminology, even that which the student should obviously know (“addendum”, “adverb”, “diffusion”, “catalyst”), and use instead descriptive phrases so as not to overload his brain. It is necessary to firmly know the program of each class and adhere to it, making allowances for the depth of knowledge and abilities of each individual student.
We wanted the best, but it turned out as always. These words perfectly describe what is happening in Russian education today. Serious problems exist literally at every stage: in kindergartens, general education, correctional and music schools, institutes, universities and academies. At the same time, everyone is dissatisfied with the reform of the educational sector: children and their parents, school teachers, university teachers and academicians, and employers of young professionals. To understand this problem, Reedus is starting a series of articles devoted to the educational sphere. Today we will talk about schools.
Study, study and study
Modern students follow this Leninist behest much more than their parents did during their school years. The educational load on children today is greater than ever. At the beginning of May, a story about a woman who asked too much for the house thundered throughout the country. A criminal case was opened against her, but later the prosecutor's office of the Chelyabinsk region declared the decision illegal and canceled the decision.
So far, this is the only such media scandal, but today's schoolchildren are forced to gnaw on the granite of science like damned ones. “School, tutors, homework, sleep. So - seven days a week. There is no time left for anything else,” says one of the graduates. Perhaps his words should be taken critically: he does not have a great love for learning most of teenagers, but this point of view is shared by many teachers. “It’s a huge burden. It needs to be sharply reduced. Children are essentially occupied 7 days a week, given that many schools practice six days a week. In this case, they study from Monday to Saturday, and Sunday is almost completely occupied with preparation for Monday. No, there are, of course, those who both study and manage to play sports, but they are an absolute minority,” says Natalya Koneva, who worked as a school English teacher for five years.
According to the standards, students from grades 7 to 11 are not supposed to have more than 7 lessons per day. With a five-day education system in grades 10-11, the number of teaching hours is limited to 34 per week, with a six-day system - 37. This is already a lot, taking into account homework, but in reality these requirements are often not met: there are 8 lessons a day, and 41 lessons per week.
Screenshot of an electronic diary from one of the educational forums, where an eleventh grader proves that he is overworked beyond the norm
Most likely, no one would talk about the increased workload on schoolchildren if there was any sense in it. However, the results of the “training diet with a high content of granite science” are not at all encouraging. Two years ago, after passing the Unified State Exam in the Russian language, a serious scandal broke out: many schoolchildren failed to overcome the minimum passing score.
"The results of a single state exam in Russian this year are monstrous. The Ministry of Education was even forced to lower the score from 36 to 24 points, effectively legitimizing that a D is a passing grade. Otherwise, a third of the country's graduates would not receive certificates. At the same time, as we know how to do, it was presented triumphantly - they say, they have learned to control it so well that no one is cheating anymore. But you need to see the result behind this,” said Vladimir Tolstoy, adviser to the President of the Russian Federation, in June 2014.
The result is disastrous. Most likely, there will be no failure in the Unified State Examination results this year, including thanks to the “legalized bad marks.” However, schools do not fulfill their main task: they teach how to effectively place “daws”, but do not provide knowledge. In order to give them to their children, parents are forced to seriously spend money on all kinds of tutors - and if just a decade and a half ago this expense item fell on the final grades, today many send their offspring for paid knowledge starting from grades 6-7.
“With this education reform, I will always have a job.”
Natalya Koneva, an English tutor, is sure of this. Tired of working at school, meaningless, in her own words, and merciless, she went into private business. “If by 18-19 they do the Unified State Examination according to English language mandatory, then there will be work - from morning to night. Our entire system is structured in such a way that parents from the fifth grade must send their children to tutors; the older they are, the more tutors there are. As early as 12 years old, children must decide what they will do for the rest of their lives,” she adds.
The increased workload falls not only on schoolchildren, but also on teachers. “To get a good salary, you have to live at school from morning to night. If a student does not go to school because he lives in a dysfunctional family or is a poor student, then this is the teacher’s problem,” says Natalya Koneva. But it’s not just about the immediate teaching and educational load. Education reform has added more paperwork to teachers.
“I was told - I didn’t know, by the way - that out of 100% of the reports that teachers and school employees write, only 30% are on instructions from the Ministry of Education, and 70% are generally from outside organizations. This is, of course, a disgrace. It is necessary to prepare a real legislative restriction on these reports. The teacher must mind his own business, and if he writes reports, then, accordingly, this time is stolen from our children,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
It is worth noting that in that part of the work with documents that is done at the direction of the Ministry of Education, not everything is going smoothly. “Our work is constantly duplicated,” says Natalya Koneva. - Paper journal - electronic journal, paper diary - electronic diary, and so on".
“When I came to school, we had just introduced an electronic journal, the first year. Nobody knew what to do with him. We organized courses. A computer science teacher came several times and told me how to fill it out. And then it turns out that the log can “fall”, the databases can completely disappear if you suddenly forgot to make a “backup”. The grades disappear, and here some extra field appears, because the programmers are updating the magazine as you work. They gave you the “alpha version”, and enjoy. Only we all got used to it, the next year they hired us and told us by order from above that everyone would now fill out this electronic journal: a different site, a different program, a different interface, different features. They used it for two years. Then - a new version... And you also need to maintain a portfolio of children. When should you do your homework? Prepare for them? When to take care of children?” Sergei asks rhetorical questions, former teacher geography and French.
“Today it’s common to blame teachers for everything: they teach poorly, not like before. But today’s teachers are the same people who worked in schools twenty years ago,” he continues. “The problems are not in the teachers, the problems are in the system itself, in the approach to school education.”
“There are a lot of claims,” explains Natalya Koneva. - For example, to textbooks. In my subject they are simply unacceptable. The first three years of school - second, third, fourth grades - children learn a lot of things: absolutely unnecessary vocabulary, unnecessary grammar. Unnecessary because it is not worked out. Some kind of utopian textbook: you can teach from it only if there is one hundred percent attendance, and in the lessons there are only geniuses who grasp everything on the fly. In fifth grade, failure begins: they begin to relearn the alphabet. This relaxation lasts for two years: grades 5-6. And then the “pile up” begins again, increasing the volume of material. By 11th grade they should know a lot, but in fact they know little. No matter how hard you try, nothing will work. There are wonderful textbooks, but you cannot use them, because you can only use those that have the stamp of the Ministry of Education. This is a very limited number of textbooks."
Similar claims are made against teaching aids on a variety of subjects. For example, the chairman of the Association of History and Social Science Teachers, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Chubaryan, at the All-Russian Congress of History Teachers noted “problems with social studies”: “I recently looked at textbooks on social studies. They are very abstract and difficult even for a history student, let alone a schoolchild.”
“The leapfrog with textbooks and the associated difficulties in the form of differences in programs have been going on since approximately 2003. First one thing, then another. The main thing is stability, but there is no such thing in schools, we always have something new,” says Sergei. “The requirements for the Unified State Exam change every year, and not only the requirements for the exam change, but also for its content.”
This happened this year, 2016: the Unified State Examination in mathematics was divided into two levels - basic and specialized. The results of the basic exam were announced today, and the results of the profile exam will become public in a week. There are no official results yet. The regions are so far only proud of the number of students who have scored one hundred points in the Unified State Examination in Russian and mathematics. Probably, this year there will be no major scandals, like in 2014.
the main task the educational department is to provide the maximum number of schoolchildren with certificates of secondary education, and representatives of the Ministry of Education carefully monitor this, first and foremost. The consequences of this approach and educational reform are already visible today: the first representatives of the Unified State Examination generation graduated from universities and went to work.
“Two new teachers came to my school. They entered teacher training universities with an average certificate score of “3”. How will they teach children history? As a head teacher, I see that for now they are an empty place,” one of the head teachers said at the All-Russian Congress of History Teachers. Dmitry Livanov is still focused on a single history textbook (of which there were actually three) and a mass one. “This cockroach needs to be put into mass production, since this technological innovation will not only be interesting, but also useful for children and teenagers,” he said in February. The matter has not yet reached the point of fighting cockroaches in the minds of individual education officials.
Our next materials will talk about the consequences of school consolidation and inclusive education, kindergartens and music schools, problems of Russian universities and fundamental science, corruption in the educational sphere, the dubious dissertation of Isaac Kalina and other interesting things from the world of science.
