As with most policies and procedures, many businesses wish this wasn't something we had to do. As we experience things and as I continue to learn from my mistakes, this became something I knew I needed to create for the sake of us all.
Side note: I am also on the public elementary supply teaching list and I could be booked daily with the amount of jobs open and available, but tutoring your child is my first priority so I will not accept jobs if I am scheduled to work with your student that day. However, I do appreciate that if you can't make an appointment (last minute) that no refund or credit will be provided on the same day that you have to cancel. If I have advanced notice, I am able to work at a school instead. Thank you for understanding.
Life happens and I respect that, we are always course-correcting and trying to survive day to day things, not to mention the stress that many are under. As a parent, I know that you appreciate that the time I take to prepare and summarize for your child, is more than just the time I take with them during the session. As a way to continue to be able to provide services, I have come up with just a few things that I've never written down before, but felt it may be helpful now as we continue to work together. Thank you for understanding, I am sure you will agree that what I am asking for is respectable. This is for everyone's best interest.
Side note: I am also on the public elementary supply teaching list and I could be booked daily with the amount of jobs open and available, but tutoring your child is my first priority so I will not accept jobs if I am scheduled to work with your student that day. However, I do appreciate that if you can't make an appointment (last minute) that no refund or credit will be provided on the same day that you have to cancel. If I have advanced notice, I am able to work at a school instead. Thank you for understanding.
Life happens and I respect that, we are always course-correcting and trying to survive day to day things, not to mention the stress that many are under. As a parent, I know that you appreciate that the time I take to prepare and summarize for your child, is more than just the time I take with them during the session. As a way to continue to be able to provide services, I have come up with just a few things that I've never written down before, but felt it may be helpful now as we continue to work together. Thank you for understanding, I am sure you will agree that what I am asking for is respectable. This is for everyone's best interest.
Student interaction and readiness:
Student practice at home:
Lates or cancellations:
Breaks in sessions:
***as you can see, I value communication very much. As I said before, I completely understand that life happens in many ways and when you communicate with me about challenges, cancellations, lates or payments, I respect and appreciate that very much. (ps. your details about challenges are not my business at all, but communicating with me that you need more time to pay or you had to cancel last minute all helps me prepare and plan ahead. Thanks for also understanding that this is a business and last minute cancellations need to be paid because I've spent a lot of time to prepare).
Thank you again for understanding that I didn't even want to write these Policies down. In the past, I've had some families take advantage of my very flexible ways of conducting this business and it created unfortunate tension at times. I appreciate that you wouldn't do that, however this document helps all of us.
Once again, I am grateful to be even a small part of your child's journey! Thanks for your trust.
Tara Cooper
705-718-8385
- if your child is "off" or unwell or distracted, this makes for a difficult session for them
- (I remember when I took a job at M&M Meats decades ago, they told me that if at any time we had "life" going on and we wouldn't be focused on work, that it was best to call in to take the day off because interaction and willingness to be present was most important for business and learning.)
- I will ask this of you also. If your child is more tired than usual because of something going on for them or they are just not ready to engage and participate that day, I would rather you give them the time to regroup (meditate, do some exercise etc.) and cancel our session together. A back up lesson will be recorded and sent to you for your child to complete when they feel better.
- I do my best to try to bring the child back into focus and sometimes they are not interested in doing the work, and I may come across to them as questioning if they are focused or serious that day, I may even ask if they are needing a change (get up and move) or a short break to regroup, and in extreme cases, if we still have time in our session I will ask if they are done for the day, (I don't force anyone to learn with me, I don't want this to be a forced thing ever) and if they say yes, and we cut the session short based on your son/daughter's response - no session fee will be reimbursed. (in the very few times when this has happened I have had parents admit to me that stressful things were going on or they were more tired than normal) - these are times when tutoring isn't as important as their well being is. You know your child better than anyone, so I trust that if you know your child is off that day, that you let them have the break. This is a time for you/them to regroup and do something relaxing or fun with them. Tutoring can wait. Like M&M's says, take the day to regroup. A recorded back up lesson will be offered.
- In some cases if this happens a lot, it may be that the way I tutor them isn't what they need or isn't what is best for them. When children are responding in ways that seem aloof or disengaged on a regular basis, I will let you know in the summary and you may want to take a look for someone that is a better fit for them to work with. I never want your child to feel like they don't want to have sessions with me, if this happens, I may not be the right fit for your child and that is okay. I am humble and know that I am not the only teacher/tutor for everyone. I am approachable so please don't hesitate to let me know if you are upset or unsure about anything.
Student practice at home:
- **ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT if you have only 1 session a week or only 30 minute sessions per day
- Ideally in Orton-Gillingham, it is recommended that tutors are working with students 5 times a week for 1 hour each session. The repetition and review is built into the sessions every day as time permits. For sessions under 60 minutes, or only 1 time a week for an hour, it is harder to cover all the review and practice needed, therefore practice at home is a strong recommendation, for best long lasting results and general ease in all sessions for each student.
- repetition is key, therefore when I plan and prepare to help your child, I do so knowing that I can't do this alone, parents or older siblings can be part of the team. The more the child can take 10 minutes a day at home (for blending drills and red words), the more our sessions will be on track and the more ground we can cover during our sessions.
- if your child is being tutored with the Orton-Gillingham model for reading/spelling, please have your child practice the blending drills daily as well as the red word practice daily (I will not add red words or continue them if I can see they are not practicing, because some sessions are either too short or not often enough to take the time to work on red words. If your child is practicing this daily, we will continue to make red words part of our drills. On the practice page, I have 2 decks that you are able to use to work on red words at your own pace if you'd rather do this completely at home. (the goal is for students to be able to spell a red word at least 7 times correctly before retiring that word and adding a new one). Ideally working on 3-5 at a time is enough. Please let me know if you'd like more information on the recommendations of steps if a child isn't spelling the red words correctly.
- Eg. if red words are not practiced daily and we only have time in our sessions to cover them once in a week, chances are the red words will never get enough practice for us to add new words. If we can't add new words we will stop this part of the program. -see above for options to do this on your own if you wish.
- Blending drills are easy and can be done either online or with your child's sound cards (labeled on the back and the practice page has details of how this is done). If your child works virtually with me, contact me to get an online deck for me to share with you to use at home, I will prepare this after each lesson if you are using it (it will change after each lesson as we add new "cards". Otherwise if your child works with me in person, they have their own deck based on the phonemes they've already mastered. The reason blending drills are so important is because we work pretty fast through the "sounds" or phonemes and as we build each week, old sounds are not reviewed as often. The more practice a child has at home the less likely they will need a detailed refresher during our session. If refreshers are needed, I do this no problem, it will just slow down the process we are going through each day and we will not cover as much of the current lesson as planned.
- optional extra practice: I create extra practice through games (also found for each phoneme that your child has learned with me on the practice page), this page requires a password for you to log into and I will make available the practice that your child has already previously mastered so that they don't get stuck with concepts they haven't learned yet. This is optional but it will help them practice and have fun in between sessions.
Lates or cancellations:
- I completely understand that life happens. If anyone understands that, it's me after losing my mom and mother in law within 3 months of one another in 2021. I am pretty good to make it simple to provide a recorded session for your child or accommodate late starting sessions. These are the things I kindly ask from you:
- If you know you will be late for a session, please text me at 705-718-8385 to let me know. If I don't have a session or another appointment right after your child, I will extend my time to accommodate the late start time
- If you don't let me know you are late, I will only be able to keep your session open for 15 minutes, at that time I will call it a missed session and I will create a recorded lesson for your child to do at their own time at home. (no refund will be provided and I will not transfer payment to a future session).
- If you have to cancel within 48 hours, it is often difficult for me to reschedule based on limited time available, therefore I will send a recorded session to make up for the cancellation if we can't reschedule that same month.
- If you know about a cancellation prior to 48 hours, we can try to work out a session to reschedule (if time permits), or I can send a recorded lesson. (credits are applied towards next month's bill in specific situations with notice of more than 48 hours - if you've already paid for it)
- Missed sessions or last minute cancellations will be expected to be paid because I've planned and set up to meet with your child and that spot was not available to anyone else (I will not provide a recorded lesson in this case, because I had full intentions of meeting with your child live)
- Cancellations that I have to make for personal reasons will be communicated with you and I will provide a choice of refund, credit for next month, recorded session or reschedule (if time allows in our schedules) - I try not to ever do this, but sometimes it has to happen for illnesses with my family or unforeseen circumstances.
- In the event of one of my own children being sick, I will always give you notification about that so that you can decide if you want to continue with in person session or if you'd like to have a session offered virtually (the same great service is provided virtually)
- I would appreciate full payment each month before the sessions begin (this is easier for invoicing and record keeping)
- cash is the preferred method of payment, e-transfer or credit is also available (if required)
- if you know you cannot pay a bill (either pre-paid for the month, or a session if you pay per session), no problem, communication goes a very long way. I don't mind this at all when you communicate it with me.
- 20 days of non-payment and no response to reminders, I will have to put a restriction on any personalized or practice pages, next time you try to login (if you do) it will show you an "attention required" notification page. (5% fee may be applied for late payment)
- 30 days of non-payment and no response to reminders, I will delete any pages I've created for your child or you. (it takes me a long time to create these personalized pages and keep them up to date, so this is something I don't want to have to do). (10% late fee)
- if you wish to continue tutoring services now or in the future after a deletion of pages, there will be new customer fee of $50 for admin to re-create the pages for you and your child and your grandfathered rate/current price will not be honoured if our prices have increased since you started with MCK Academy.
Breaks in sessions:
- If something has come up and your child needs to stop sessions for a while, but you want to keep them on my list as current members/students, again I completely understand. If you wish to keep your current price and membership pages active, just let me know and we can discuss options about when you wish to start again. If a member pauses for over 3 months we will have to start as a new student with a new set of assessments to see where they are starting from.
- This also applies to all members that I had to pause because of my need to focus on helping my own children after school with their academics they are struggling with. (any member that hasn't had tutoring since I canceled my after school sessions, will be the first I contact when I am able to add more evening sessions again - daytime sessions are still available to those who are wanting to start up again before I can offer after school spots)
***as you can see, I value communication very much. As I said before, I completely understand that life happens in many ways and when you communicate with me about challenges, cancellations, lates or payments, I respect and appreciate that very much. (ps. your details about challenges are not my business at all, but communicating with me that you need more time to pay or you had to cancel last minute all helps me prepare and plan ahead. Thanks for also understanding that this is a business and last minute cancellations need to be paid because I've spent a lot of time to prepare).
Thank you again for understanding that I didn't even want to write these Policies down. In the past, I've had some families take advantage of my very flexible ways of conducting this business and it created unfortunate tension at times. I appreciate that you wouldn't do that, however this document helps all of us.
Once again, I am grateful to be even a small part of your child's journey! Thanks for your trust.
Tara Cooper
705-718-8385