Wendy, volunteer tutor and retired teacher

Wendy has recently retired as an Assistant Headteacher. She was head of sixth form and an English teacher for 22 years. The one thing that Wendy missed more than anything else was working with students and being able to work one-to-one with students was always important to her. And so when she retired, she thought about perhaps tutoring. When Wendy discovered Action Tutoring, it was a real way for her to be able to give something back.

This is what Wendy says about tutoring with Action Tutoring:

I tutor at a secondary school in Birmingham. I’ve got two boys just coming up to their GCSEs and it’s been really rewarding being able to work with those two students.

I think the main thing is when you leave teaching, people joke around, saying “oh, you’re going to have all this free time,” but you find yourself missing certain elements of teaching that you can’t find anywhere else. What’s really interesting about tutoring is that it’s a way of keeping in touch with the reasons why I became a teacher in the first place. I wanted to help my students and there was nothing better than getting their results and seeing that what you had done had had an impact. So I’m going into a school I’ve not been to before, meeting new students and gaining their trust. And it’s all those skills that you’ve developed over the years, they just automatically kick in. I think that’s one of the most exciting parts about it, really. And you’re making a difference. And you’re seeing the impact. I started in January and the two boys I’m tutoring have had two sets of mocks since then, and they’ve improved. You can see results straight away. 

The way that it’s all set up is great. We have the programme coordinator from Action Tutoring in the classroom and we have the link teacher from the school as well. What I’ve observed is that when the students come in, they’re so respectful that they come straight in, they’re getting straight on with it. And to be honest, that doesn’t always happen in a classroom. So it’s really good to see these children, who perhaps misbehave in a room full of other people, they haven’t got that distraction now. And I think the resources that we’re given really help to keep the momentum going. With the two boys that I’ve got, every time I stop talking and say “it’s your turn to have a go”, they just get straight on with it. I think that’s the power of small group tutoring. As well as the children responding well to being in a small group and having the attention that they need. 

I think the resources that we’re given are so good because, from my perspective, I’m so used to creating my resources, so to have them tailored was excellent. I’ve just started my master’s degree in Victorian Gothic and ironically, one of the texts that we were using in a tutoring session was a text I just read for my degree. And I was saying to the boys, “Oh, I’m doing a degree and I’ve just read this,” and you could almost see them going, “Oh, so this is not rubbish that we’re reading. This is really good stuff.” 

I think it’s hard to pick one highlight of tutoring, but it’s been a really enjoyable experience. There was one day where a tutor couldn’t come in, so there were three other students who needed to be taught and I just took all five of them and I was just teaching them as normal. I was told afterwards that people were watching and listening. To me, it was normal because I’m a teacher and that’s what I do. But the other tutors in my group, they’re not teachers. They’ve come from businesses and all over to do the tutoring, so they’re listening and have been amazed that I could teach five children in one go. I think that was interesting – that we’ve got people from outside of teaching wanting to do this and doing a really good job of it as well.