Confirmation of Interest Document: the Organization for Psychoeducational Tutoring



Thank you very much for your interest in helping a child or some children, using the methods of psychoeducational tutoring. Please copy this document, fill in the answers right on the document, save it, and send it to jstray@gmail.com, Joseph Strayhorn, M.D.


These confirmation of interest questions are meant partly to help people decide whether they really want to pursue becoming a psychoeducational tutor. The job requires a great deal of careful, patient, enthusiastic, and dependable work, in return for not very much money. A major factor that can make the pro/con ratio come out favorably is the chance to really help someone in ways that few other jobs provide. A second is the chance to get more exposure to life's most important ideas: “How to be mentally healthy” is very much tantamount to “How to live a good life.” You might take a look at the section on pros and cons of being a tutor, at the optskills.org website. If the pro/con ratio doesn't come out high enough for you, please know that we are nonetheless honored by your even considering working with us. If after considering the pros and cons, you are still interested, please write in the answers to the questions below, just below the questions.


1) Please write your full name, today’s date, your email address, and your phone number.



2) Although we very much want to provide a very favorable experience for tutor candidates and employees, we are obligated first and foremost to the children who receive our services. OPT pairs each student (the child) with one tutor, and the student often develops a strong attachment to the tutor. If the tutor decides to quit the job prematurely, the student may be very disappointed, feel rejected, and find it more difficult to accept a new tutor. Thus our tutor selection procedures put a heavy premium on finding people who will not only do an excellent job, but who will maintain the commitment for a year or more. We have found that it is impossible to predict commitment by interviews, and it is even difficult for tutor candidates themselves to predict how much persistence power they can muster for a job that they have not yet experienced. Over years, we have found that the best solution is to offer a training course to tutor candidates, which takes somewhere on the order of 8 hours, in which the candidate can become very familiar with what goes on. This is done remotely, as is the tutoring. The tutor candidate can demonstrate the ability to keep phone appointments punctually, and to experience what it is like to have several phone appointments. We have found that in the course of such training, most candidates self-select regarding whether they are willing and able to commit to this particular mission. There is no money exchanged for the training, in either direction. If someone finds the training interesting but decides not to do the tutoring, that’s OK. The training provides an opportunity for the tutor candidate to get very detailed experience with both the job and the supervisor with whom they will be working, and for the supervisor to get very familiar with the candidate. Until the moment of official hire, neither tutor candidate nor supervisor has made a commitment; after the hire, hopefully the commitment is strong enough to serve a child in an exemplary way.

What’s your reaction to this? Is this OK with you?



3) Despite the fact that we want tutors to be available for at least a year, we can’t control what families decide, and it’s possible that they may terminate the tutoring at any point. (Though historically, most have not done so prematurely, once the family has made it through a two to four weeks trial period.) Thus it “isn’t fair” that we are asked to be very persistent, when the family may not be. Any reactions to this?


4) There are two elements of the “ball and chain” commitment demanded by this project. We’ve talked about the long-term commitment. The other is the day-to-day necessity to keep appointments. Are you already in the habit of keeping very close to 100% of the appointments you make? What happens if you have an evening appointment with a child, and you get an invitation to do something with someone that evening? What happens if there is a big exam to prepare for that will occur tomorrow? What happens if a big social event comes up? What if there’s a sports contest that occurs during the window during which the child is available? What if you have another job that demands that you work overtime? What if you get a job that leaves you depleted in the evening and not wanting to interrupt your only free time with a scheduled appointment? (Are you looking for other work in addition to this? If so, can you predict how demanding or exhausting it might be when you find it?) What if you get into a relationship with someone who wants to spends evenings with you uninterrupted by telephone tutoring? What if you decide to run for office or take on some other very time-consuming project? Many people of great ability are unsuited to be psychoeducational tutors only because their life styles are too packed with activities that don’t permit taking a half-hour break for the tutoring session, or because they may move into such a life style. Please reflect on your own life style, and please comment on the degree of sacrifice that it would necessitate in order to keep a consistent half-hour appointment, six days a week.



5) Could you please summarize, from what you’ve read or heard so far, what you understand the Psychoeducational Tutoring intervention to be, and how it purports to make life better for children? (If you haven't done so already, please take a look at www.optskills.org.)



6) Could you please tell about your own motivational structure regarding this project – in other words, why are you interested in doing this? It’s fine to have self-seeking motives as well as altruistic ones. “What is in it for you?”




7) This job is by necessity very much part-time, because children are available during the school year only in the after school hours. Usually the most that any tutor is able to work into a schedule is three students. The majority of tutors so far have worked with only one child. If you hold half-hour sessions for 25 days out of a month, 12.5 hours times $18 per hour comes out to only $225 in the month, $2700 over a year, before tax withholding. Is the economic arithmetic a problem for you?



8) Thanks again for your interest in working with us and in helping a child or children through our organization. Could you please write anything more that you would like, that would help us know you better?