Sam, volunteer tutor

I wanted to look at tutoring opportunities and had a few organisations recommended to me. It was October and I looked and signed up for one which was busy until March and then another wanted to wait till the next academic year. Action tutoring offered to get me started within months and told me I’d likely be tutoring before Christmas. 

After signing up, I had a training session booked for a couple of weeks’ time. I found the training really helpful, it wasn’t too heavy going and did a good job of preparing me for what to expect. Then the online resources were very helpful letting me go through the workbooks we’d be using and to take extra training courses. I’ve loved how being with Action tutoring gives me access to the 360 learning platform and how I’m able to access courses off there to further boost my skills. 

Working out of the training booklets has been a good feature too. You have the lesson mapped out for you to allow you to prepare in advance and you can also see at a glance what your future lessons will be. When I was initially worried about how I’d structure a session, getting the booklet proved very reassuring. The GCSE course has changed a lot since I did it 15 years ago and the booklets helped me get up to date with this as I found I was learning new things myself as we went along. 

I had originally intended to stick to online sessions but the training and resources gave me the confidence to push myself and go for face to face sessions at a local school instead –  by December, I was providing sessions and loving it. 

While requiring only an hour a week, I’ll admit I’ve enjoyed preparing ahead for my sessions. There’s extra info in the session booklets and obviously a lot of information online and I’ve liked the flexibility allowed when tutoring where we can introduce some ideas ourselves for a small part of the session if we think it’ll work well with the group. 

The team is wonderful too at every level. The students I’ve had have all been friendly and engaged (even on their first day back after Christmas!), the other tutors are very supportive with helpful tips (and without fail it seems, an interesting backstory), the Action tutoring co-ordinator has done a brilliant job of keeping everything running and making sure I was well informed of what was going on and finally the staff at the school were very welcoming too and even supplied us with cups of tea. 

In terms of myself, I feel much more confident as a person now. It’s been great to speak to younger people and see how they view the world and when getting to know each other at the start of the sessions, I’ve found them very knowledgeable about what’s going on in the world and it’s been great to chat about that. It’s been great to get to know a local school (that I didn’t know existed!) and I feel more a part of my local community now too. 

Finally what’s been especially wonderful for me is that I actually became disabled about 6 years ago and it’s been extremely debilitating and I was housebound for a good few years. I’ve been very worried about getting back out into the world again but I had the thought that doing something like this where it’s just once a week just for an hour could be of benefit. After just a few weeks of enjoying it, I agreed to another session straight after (so a 2 hour bloc in total) and I found I absolutely loved this too and was able to handle it physically. This has all given me the most confidence I’ve had in my capabilities since falling unwell. It’s been of just such tremendous benefit to me and I’m in such a better place than I was this time last year before I’d started the tutoring and I genuinely think it’s been a key factor in helping me get out more.   

In fact, it’s all made me realise that I enjoy teaching so much that when I’m in the flow of doing that, I don’t feel my normal pain in the same way. I’ve enjoyed it so much it’s leading to me leaving my job of 15 years to retrain to be a teacher, I start September now. The tutoring was great in giving me the confidence to realise this is something I could do and I’m so grateful for that it’s hard to put into words.

I’ve been feeling so positive about it that I’ve almost been waiting for the chance to put it into words so apologies for the amount you’ve got above but couldn’t stop writing once I’d started. As you can see, its been an all round great experience through and through. I’m just attempting to get some friends to sign up as I leave as some form of replacement!