Career and Education Questions

All in all, Mathnasium pays very little for running a mad-house. You are paid like $12 an hour to run around like a chicken with her head cut off.

It's a facility where you don't have to create your own content, but that's not necessarily a good thing if you are a true math lover and have an independent nature. Did I forget to mention that they don't want you to use calculators?

That's because the "method" they use is pre-made worksheets. Sounds great, right? NOT SO GREAT because . . . each student is assigned a certain set of worksheets to complete by the end of his or her stay that day. The annoying thing is, they cannot go to the next sheet until you check it. If you don't happen to have the tablet with the answer key (which is hogged by other "instructors"), then you have to manually work out all of the problems yourself.

Even if you are good in math, each student is working on a different subject, so it's very likely that you will get a huge headache by the end of the day/night, not only because one minute you're adding fractions and then the next you are solving a geometry problem. . . but because of what I mentioned earlier . . . that the students are waiting on YOU to check their answers before they can move on to the next.

At the same time that you have students waiting on you, you have to help new kids sign in and make sure that the kids whose time is up sign out.

In addition, you have kids there who are not motivated at all to do math. (So you have to motivate them.) On the other hand, you've got some really talented kids that really shouldn't be there who finish a sheet so quickly that before you can take the time to check another student's sheet's answers, that kid is waiting on YOU to check their sheet (AGAIN).

And the kids' parents really want you to help their child with homework and studying, but you are pressured by Mathnasium to throw their worksheets in the kid's faces. It's like boot camp.

And besides the tutoring aspect of it, they allow the place to be filled with snacks. Guess who has to clean up their mess (vacuuming, etc.) and refill the snacks so that they can make more of a mess? That's right. YOU.

If you want to keep your nerves and don't want to do: MASS-FAST-PACED-tutoring, janitorial work, and life health coach work all for a grand total of $12 an hour, I would try advertising on craigslist, tutoring online, or something. That way you can tutor ONE person in ONE subject. If you happen to need to tutor more than one person at the same time, at least you can plan it that they are all learning the same subject. Not only will you be your own boss and keep your nerves, but you will make at least twice the hourly rate.

/r/math Thread Parent