Online tutoring after you retire from teaching
Kallydo team ·
Plenty of teachers keep teaching after they retire, one student at a time and online. Kallydo itself started with one of them: a retired maths teacher who needed a better whiteboard to keep tutoring, which we wrote about in why we built Kallydo. This post covers the decisions a retired teacher faces when starting out: where students come from, what equipment you need, and how to move your lessons online.
Why do retired teachers make good tutors?
Because the hard part is already done. Years in a classroom mean you know how to explain an idea three different ways, you know where students usually go wrong, and you know the syllabus and the exams. Those are exactly what parents hope a tutor will bring.
Should you join a platform or find your own students?
It depends on whether you would rather spend time finding students or give up part of each fee. Many tutors do both at first.
| Tutoring platform | Your own students | |
|---|---|---|
| Finding students | Students come to you through the platform | You find them yourself |
| Your share of the fee | Less than you charge; Wyzant, for example, keeps 25% | All of it |
| Payments and booking | Handled for you | You arrange them |
| Setting your rate | Within the platform's rules | Entirely yours |
Your own students often come from people who already know your work: former colleagues, parents from your old school, local parent groups and community noticeboards. Retired teachers also advertise in local and teaching groups on social media, and a short post saying what you teach, to which levels, and when you are free is usually enough to start.
If you draw a teacher's pension, check your scheme's rules on paid work after retiring, and check how your tax office treats self-employed income, before you take your first paying student. The rules differ by country and by scheme.
What do you need to teach online?
Less than you might think:
- A laptop or desktop computer with a webcam, and a headset or a decent microphone. Clear sound matters more than a sharp picture.
- A video calling app your students can use easily, such as Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams.
- A whiteboard you can write on by hand. For maths and science, a tablet with a stylus makes working out far quicker than drawing with a mouse.
- Somewhere to keep your lessons, so the worked example from three weeks ago is easy to find again.
In Kallydo, each lesson is a document of A4 pages, and each page has the paper you would have handed out: ruled, grid, dots, graph, isometric or blank. You can plan on a laptop and teach from a tablet, because every page saves itself and syncs across your devices.
How do you move your old lessons online?
Gradually. There is no need to rebuild years of material before your first student.
- Start with what your first students need. Recreate a worked example the first time you teach it online, and keep it for next time.
- Keep good printed handouts as PDFs. A phone scan is enough to share a favourite worksheet with a student.
- Organise as you go. A folder per level or exam, with a folder per topic inside it, keeps a growing library easy to search. How to set that up in Kallydo is in how to organise your lessons into folders.
What should you charge?
Start from what tutors at your level charge for your subject, then make sure the rate covers your preparation time as well as the lesson. The published numbers and a simple way to work out your own rate are in how much to charge for online tutoring.
Try it before your first lesson
The Kallydo demo board is a working whiteboard that runs in your browser, with no account and no sign-up. Redraw one of your favourite worked examples on it, on the paper you would have used in class, and see how it feels to teach that way.