The Clara James Approach to learning

When I sat down to record this I hadn't intended to talk you out of tutoring and that is not my goal, but after a conversation in a Facebook Group the other day it became evident of how many people are selling "the dream" the false elution that tutoring can take place anywhere in the world and can earn you tens of thousands of pounds each month.

But like with most things that are worth having, it's hard work. There will be tears of joy, tears of devastation. People will question you, you will question yourself.

But if you persevere and keep going, tutoring will offer you one of the most rewarding experiences, one of the greatest feelings of pride imaginable.

I hope that you enjoy the journey as much as (believe it or not) I have.

If you are thinking of becoming a tutor and you are looking for support along the way, I may be able to help: Become a tutor

I hope it brings you the same happiness and success that it has brought me over the years

One of the questions I'm asked most often is...

"How often should my child have tutoring?"

The honest answer?

There isn't one.

Every family is different.

Some children thrive with weekly lessons.

Others benefit from two sessions a week for a short period.

Some families choose fortnightly lessons because that's what fits around their commitments and budget.

The same goes for lesson length.

Whilst many of our lessons are an hour, some younger children (or those who find concentrating for a full hour difficult) make much better progress in a 45-minute session.

For us, there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer.

Our job isn't to squeeze children into our timetable.

It's to find an approach that works for your child, your family and your circumstances.

Sometimes the opportunities we say "no" to shape our future just as much as the ones we say "yes" to.

Years ago, when Clara James was still in its early days, someone very kindly offered to buy me a tutoring franchise.

They genuinely wanted to help me.

They thought it would give me the financial boost I needed at the time.

On paper, it probably made a lot of sense.

An established name.

A ready-made business.

A shortcut.

But I said no.

Not because there was anything wrong with the franchise.

Because it wasn't right for me.

The approach to tutoring didn't sit comfortably with what I believed.

I wanted learning to be engaging.

To be flexible.

To be adapted to the individual child.

The franchise's approach was much more structured and based around repetition and learning by rote.

I know that approach works well for some children.

But I also knew it wasn't the way I wanted to teach.

So I walked away.

Looking back now, I'm incredibly grateful that I did.

Because if I'd accepted that opportunity, Clara James probably wouldn't exist today.

The philosophy we've spent years building...

Putting the child before the curriculum.

Building confidence alongside knowledge.

Adapting our teaching to the individual.

Seeing labels as clues rather than conclusions.

...might never have happened.

That experience taught me something I've carried with me ever since.

When you're building something that matters to you, don't just ask:

"Will this make me successful?"

Ask:

"Does this align with what I believe?"

Because success without alignment rarely feels like success for very long.

That's true in tutoring.

It's true in business.

And I suspect it's true in life.

Sometimes the most important decision isn't knowing what to say yes to.

It's having the confidence to say no to the things that pull you away from who you want to become.

Looking back, I'm incredibly grateful I chose to build something that reflected my values rather than taking the easiest path.

If you've ever wondered whether tutoring could become something more than a job—something that genuinely changes children's lives—I'd love to tell you more about what we're building at Clara James.

Just send me a message.

I wonder if we all have one teacher we'll never forget.

For me, there are two.

One taught me a lesson I'll never forget for all the wrong reasons.

At primary school, we had to write a story about penguins. Once we'd written it in pencil, the teacher would check it before we wrote over it in pen and displayed it for parents' evening.

I'd spelt the word "father" incorrectly.

She sent me back to change it.

I did.

Unfortunately, I'd changed it to "farter."

She announced it loudly enough for the whole class to hear.

Everyone laughed.

She sent me back again.

The problem wasn't that she'd corrected my spelling.

The problem was that she never actually showed me how to spell the word.

She simply kept sending me away to get it right.

Over forty years later, I still remember how embarrassed I felt.

Years later, I met another teacher.

Mrs Pope.

She taught me English at college.

A few months after I started college, my dad died.

She often checked in on me.

She listened.

She cared.

She treated me as a person before she treated me as a student.

I couldn't tell you everything she taught me.

But I'll never forget how she made me feel.

It's funny, isn't it?

The teachers we remember most aren't always the ones who taught us the curriculum best.

They're the ones who made us feel seen.

As tutors, parents and teachers, I think that's something worth remembering.

Children may not remember every worksheet...

...but they'll often remember how we made them feel.

Our reputation is so important when we start tutoring. I believe it starts so long before we find our first student by being helpful.

At the end of the day we are all very ego-centric, it is a quality that seems to make us human. So, we need to present ourselves with helpfulness as our go to first thought. What can I offer today that someone might find helpful? Here is a book I read that you might find interesting. Here is a website that might be helpful. Would this technique help your child with...

Smile and make them feel seen and appreciated, not just like an inconvenience who has signed up and now has to be delt with (yawn)

We all have stories to tell, good and bad but think about these as you grow your tutoring business, which do you want to model yourself on. What do you want to be known for.

Often it is the smallest of details that make the biggest difference like taking your shoes off as you go into someone's home, or asking how their week has been.

Stop and see them as a person. As cliche as it sounds: treat others as you would like to be treated yourself

I think we sometimes come to a lesson with preconceived ideas.

This was something I learned as a child when every teacher that had encountered my brother would point out that I'm not as clever as him...

There is also the danger that we have preconceived ideas about the child that we are working with: a dyslexic child will struggle to spell. A child on the spectrum will want to follow the same routine every time. A child with ADHD will struggle to concentrate.

But I think for everyone, we have good days and bad days. Days where we feel like we have the world on our shoulders and days when we feel like we could move mountains. If that is the case for the child you are working with, embrace that. Finish 5-minutes earlier and end on a high. Add 5-minutes so that you don’t crush the momentum that you have been building.

Work with that child you see before you, not the preconceived idea of who you think it should be.

I recently wrote a book: Become a Tutor. Build Confidence. Change Lives. It answers the questions that I had when I first started tutoring. If you would like a free copy (no strings attached just a gift from me to you) drop me an email at [email protected] and I will happily drop a copy in the post for you

I've been thinking a lot recently about how ideas travel.

In many organisations, someone at the top has a great idea.

That idea gets passed down through layers of management.

By the time it reaches the people actually doing the work every day, it often looks very different from what was originally intended.

Not because anyone did anything wrong.

Simply because every time information passes from one person to another, a little context is lost.

I don't want to build Clara James like that.

I don't want a franchise where I sit in an office deciding what every tutor should do, creating resources in isolation and assuming they'll work for every child.

Because that would contradict everything I believe about education.

If every child is different...

Then every tutor will also bring different experiences, strengths and ideas.

One tutor might discover a brilliant way of explaining fractions.

Another might create an incredible spelling game.

Someone else might find the perfect way to support a child with exam anxiety.

Why would we keep those ideas to ourselves?

The franchise I'm building isn't about saying, "Here's the manual. Off you go."

It's about building a community of tutors who learn from one another.

Who celebrate successes together.

Who bring challenges to the table.

Who ask questions without fear of judgement.

Who create resources together.

Who constantly improve what we do because every tutor sees something the rest of us haven't yet noticed.

The goal isn't to have one person with all the answers.

The goal is to build a team that keeps discovering better ones.

Because when we combine our ideas, experiences and creativity, every child benefits.

And ultimately, that's why we're here.

Not to create the perfect tutoring system.

But to become better at seeing, understanding and supporting the unique child sitting in front of us.

Putting yourself out there as a tutor takes a lot of commitment. Always in the back of your mind knowing that no-   one may be interested. Each day you put one foot in front of the other and keep going in the belief that today will be the day!

But then you put out your next post and once again it feels like you are shouting into the void and all you hear back are the echos of silence.

You decide to put on a brave face, you believe you can do this. Just 1 more attempt.

Then something in life happens that you have no control over. Probably something completely unrelated to the business that you are trying to build and it stops you in your tracks.

A part of you thinks why am I bothering with this. It feels like time to quit. To admit defeat and accept it's harder work than you ever anticipated.

I know exactly how you feel. I was there with the tutoring at times over the years and now with building the franchise. You see other people and they make it look so easy.

The truth is, most people don’t share this part.
 The posts met with silence. The no replies. The self-doubt.

But this is the part that everyone goes through - whether they admit it or not

But I suspect everyone has their down days. Just take a day to give yourself a break (a couple of years back whilst Hay was at Uni, I jumped on the next train to London and met her for lunch. This was extreme it may be just an episode of a program you enjoy with a cup of tea) and start again tomorrow.

The secret to the success is to keep going, no matter how many "1 more attempts" you need, keep taking them because one day you will get that call, then another and you have started to live the dream that a couple of months back felt so far out of reach.

If you’re at that stage where you’re thinking “is this even worth it?”  you don’t have to work it out on your own.

But actually, it only takes one or two people to know what you are doing and to spread the word for you and you will suddenly take traction, and things will start to happen. You may decide to offer a couple of lessons for free to help speed the process up.

One of the things that I also did was to have magnets on the side of my car so that when I was in someone’s house tutoring, people would see it and it was a conversation starter.

Not long after I started, I was working at a child’s home and one evening the mum went out to dinner with friends. The magnets had started a conversation which led to both parents phoning the next morning to ask for support for their sons. I still work with the niece of one of those families now and they have each spread the word for me more times than I can mention.

I was also lucky enough to tutor the local lolly-pop lady’s daughter. (I was lucky because a) they are a really lovely family, but b) the lolly-pop lady knows every family in the village and became one of my biggest and loudest cheerleaders). 

All it took was a couple of bits of “luck” and I was off.

So, hold on and luck will find you out. As I say, it takes time and effort, it’s not easy, but it is most definitely worth it.

I recently wrote a book: Become a Tutor. Build Confidence. Change Lives. It answers the questions that I had when I first started tutoring. If you would like a free copy (no strings attached just a gift from me to you) drop me an email at [email protected]

I had had a conversation with a tutor earlier this evening that has left me fuming. He is generally a fantastic tutor, but on this I did not agree with him.

He had spoken to a mum about supporting her daughter. She was in the top set but might be moved down. But, she needed a grade 6 in her exams. In the initial conversation it had come up that she is dyslexic, doesn't know her times tables and can't tell the time.

The reason he rang was to say he was setting himself up for failure with her.

I asked whether this was about her failure or his?

He responded: "both"

Reading between the lines, I think it was fear of a hit to his ego, but...

I pointed out that may be I have dyscalculia and I can't do my times tables or read the time off a clock. But, give me a more complex worded question and because of how my brain works more holistically I can pick it and part and come back with the answer with relative ease.

When was the last time you saw a higher paper where it asked you a simple times tables question, or to read the time on the clock? That's more likely to be asked on a foundation paper, so maybe it is the foundation paper that would set her up to fail.

Without ever having met her, we can not judge.

A girl I worked with last year pointed out that maybe if classes were segregated according to learning style rather than "ability" there would probably be a lot more high achievers in the education system.

Another mum of a lad I worked with a couple of years back got in touch after the exams. I hadn't realised at the time that he had been expected to fail maths. He was in the higher paper. After the results day she got in touch and said thank you. She stated that he had been so disillusioned with the educational system and felt that he was a failure. But because someone had explained something in the way that he understood it, it had made a difference. At first in maths and then other subjects too.

She said he'd never expected him to go to college but the goal was just to survive school.

He got an 8 in maths. An A in A' level maths and is now doing maths and computer science at university.

If we don't prejudge a person we can make a huge difference. And that is what tutoring should be about. Not our ego and our pass rate, but helping the child sat in front of us to meet their full potential.

That is the type of person I want to have working with us and representing the Clara James Brand. That is what I want us to be know for/ remembered as.

There are 4 different locations where you could base your tutoring from: at your home, online, at their home or in a general setting.

We’ll go through each of these, and I’ll try and be objective…

The most common form of tutoring initially was one-to-one tutoring in the tutor’s home. For the tutor it means you save yourself the financial or time expense of travel and you have all of your resources to hand. Because of the convenience to you in that respect you may lower your prices slightly as the parent is experiencing the inconvenience, however, you are still potentially offering 1-to-1 lessons so for that you can justify charging more of a premium.

Like I say, here the parents have the inconvenience of travelling and it is harder to build a rapport with them if they don’t come to the house with the child. Bearing in mind they are the ones who pay for the lessons, the bigger the rapport you can build the better. 

If this is the case, you will probably need to find a way to regularly report back to the parents on what you’ve been working on as often if they ask their children how it went the response will be something along the lines of: it was fine. What did you do? I can’t remember, or I don’t know what it’s called. Which may leave the parents questioning what they are paying for especially if the child is reluctant to go or there isn’t the uplift in the child’s confidence or grades that they were hoping for.

Online tutoring. The demand for this rose for a while throughout lockdown and for a short while after and although it still suits many families, many more are saying: actually no, we did enough of that in Covid, or it didn’t work for my child in lock-down we much prefer face-to-face.

Like tutoring in your home, it can be a much cheaper option for the parents as you’re not having to travel or create physical resources. It means the parents aren’t having to travel or loiter whilst the child is in their lesson. Most kids are also technically savvy enough that they don’t need their parents there to help.

Again, it does put a wedge between you and the parents, so after each lesson you may ask to talk to the parents still or send them a quick email or message to keep them in the loop as to what you’ve been doing. 

It is harder work for you to capture the attention of many reluctant learners when you are online as it is easier for them to turn their camera off and occupy themselves with something more entertaining such as their phone and just grunt at you from time to time to let you presume they are still actively involved.

Online lessons also seem to have a higher cancellation rate with people just not turning up, so you will need a strong cancellation policy in place to ensure that you are still paid for your time even if it is not for the full hour that the lesson was intended to last.

The next option involves biggest effort for you but the easiest option for the parents: tutoring in their home. The pros and cons to this approach are the most extreme. You can charge far more because of the convenience for the family, but it will reduce the number of families you can work with on any given day because you have to consider travel time. You will also have to have physical resources and be organised so that when you turn up, you have enough relevant resources for the full hour.

I always double check with families on the day, or the day before that they are still expecting me and if there is anything specific, they would like us to focus on. They will let you know, generally needs to be finished with but don’t hold your breath. Some do, but I normally liken it to cooking a fancy meal for your other half’s boss. You ask if there is anything specific you should cook, and they say anything. You cook a roast beef and pork with all the trimmings. When they arrive and you proudly take it out the oven, they announce that they are vegan. Some parents underestimate the time and effort that has to go into preparing for a physical lesson when you don’t have your supply of resources to hand. 

It is on many levels much more effort. However, the child is in a location where they feel more at ease so they will be in a better state of mind to learn. It is also more convenient for the parents, so they are less likely to look for an excuse to stop. You can build up a better rapport because you are working 1-to-1 and can read their body language better. It’s easier to tell if you are explaining something in a way that they understand or if you are just talking at them without making sense to them.

The final option is often reserved for bigger tutoring agencies that position themselves in shopping centres, high streets, or similar. That is tutoring from a central base. For some it will be the best option by far as it ensures that they are not interrupted and there is a clear dividing line between home and work.

However, you need to consider the additional costs that will be incurred (though you can claim them back as business expenses you need to earn that money first.) You don’t want to be working just to break even.

Every option has its advantages and disadvantages like most things do. We offer online and in-person at their home. That works well for us, but you will need to decide what is the best option for you, and why.

I hope this helps. I recently wrote a book: Become a Tutor. Build Confidence. Change Lives. 

If you would like a free copy (no strings attached just a gift from me to you) drop me an email at [email protected] or click on the link below and I will happily drop a copy in the post for you: Become a tutor - Free copy of my book