Pluspunten
Good pay Great for a summer job for a student (good pay, lots of hours especially toward the end of the summer, they are pretty nice about taking off time for vacation plans if you tell them at the very beginning or well in advance, they ask you back after the first summer if you do a good job, you feel like you've worked a "real job" not just flipping burgers, you learn a lot) Learned a lot about working with children (including dealing with children who wish you would just fall off the face of the earth, but also really sweet kids) Good community Very positive culture Fairly friendly coworkers Lots of positive reinforcement and appreciation A fairly professional environment, you are held to a high standard of maturity
Minpunten
Even after two weeks of training, you feel as if you are just thrown in at the beginning. The first session I spent with a student, I was terrified and forgot everything I was supposed to do. Luckily, someone sat in with me for most of my sessions on my first day of teaching, but after that first day I was really on my own. I suppose this helped in that I learned very quickly, but I felt that for that first week or two of working, I was not giving the students' their money's worth (or their parents who were paying), because it took some time to get down the skill of teaching the student, keeping the student engaged, taking notes the entire time, getting through the material I was supposed to teach in a session, and doing it all in a set amount of time. Sometimes dealing with bored/angry/miserable/antsy children just isn't that much fun. Some students have learning disabilities or mental difficulties. This is not the problem in and of itself, but rather that with some students who had more acute difficulties, I often was not given a whole lot of prep on how to deal with them. Usually just a few quick words of advice thrown at me just before the session was beginning. Sometimes I wouldn't even be told anything at all, and I was only lucky enough for another clinician to notice who I was teaching and give me advice, or I happened to ask beforehand because I noticed that the student seemed a bit difficult. There wasn't a lot of explanation if you were switched from tutoring a certain child. If you were removed from their schedule, you often didn't know if it was your fault, if they hated you and insisted you be removed, if their parents hated you, if you had done a terrible job with them (in which case it would be nice to have some constructive criticism), if you just weren't experienced enough to work with them (in which case it would still be nice to have some constructive criticism), or if it was a simple scheduling thing.
