Tutoring in a Time of Pandemic

Remote tutoring will be a feature of tutoring for the foreseeable future; this is all the more true for the next few months, as the Delta, Omicron, and other Greek-letter variants of COVID spread through the population.

Acumen Tutoring is determined not to be a center for the spread of Covid-19 and, accordingly, I shall be continuing to offer tutoring solely via Zoom for at least the next several months.

 

Two types of tutoring

Until COVID is unambiguously no longer an issue, Acumen Tutoring will offer two ways that students can meet for tutoring via Zoom:

 

Zoom from home or school

Students can connect to me via Zoom from their homes or from school, as we have been doing since April of 2020.

Zooming from school is admittedly awkward, since students must find a reasonably quiet, sheltered place on campus from which to connect.

 

Zoom from the Acumen Tutoring Isolation Office

Acumen Tutoring’s Student Entrance opens into our Isolation Office, an enclosed space isolated from the rest of the Acumen Tutoring suite. (See images at right; click on them to enlarge).

Students come in, set up their equipment, lay out their papers, etc. on the desk, then connect to Zoom as usual. I'm in the adjoining room (my usual office), but we'll conduct our session using Zoom, as we have for the past couple years.

The Isolation Office allows Zoom students to come to Acumen Tutoring during the school day and have a quiet, warm, dry place from which to conduct our session.

Of course, students must get permission from their schools to leave campus for tutoring. (St. Margaret allows this routinely.)

 

Notes on Side-by-Side Tutoring

Eventually, I shall resume side-by-side tutoring for students who are fully vaccinated. This will have to wait until I consider it completely safe to do so without becoming a souce of infection for my students, their families, and our community.

I shall be more cautious than the CDC in deciding when to resume in-person tutoring. Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with 50 or more students weekly for an hour at a time is an extremely efficient way to spread a contagion, much more effective than classroom teaching. (Classroom teachers can avoid having more than a few seconds of close exposure to any one student throughout the day.)

I very much look forward to meeting with students in-person again, but that must wait until the pandemic is thoroughly beaten.

Copyright © 2021 John Deubert
Updated 6/1/22