Working at CM

Classroom Matters (CM) is a small, local tutoring company owned by two women. CM is a trusted resource for many families in the community, voted “Best of the Bay” by Parents’ Press 11 years running. We’ve built our success on our philosophy of working with the whole student, meaning that we go beyond academic content needs to address executive functioning, learning differences, motivation, systemic barriers, and more. We empower students to enjoy learning, and we help students integrate proven study habits into their routine. We foster ownership, self-advocacy, and community.

We serve a diverse range of students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some of our students are neurotypical, but many of our students are neurodiverse. We offer a sliding scale to low-income and single-income families (20% of CM families utilized the sliding scale in 2020-21), and we also partner with the non-profit AccessEd Foundation, which funds a limited number of year-long scholarships for low-income families.

As a CM tutor, you have the opportunity to get to know each of your students one-on-one, build a meaningful rapport, and help them understand their individual learning needs. The majority of CM students meet with their tutor for one hour each week for the entire school year. Many students and families (and tutors!) return year after year.

Our two co-directors (the co-owners of the company) work to match you with students who will be a good fit for your experience, background, skills, and teaching style. CM tutors have a lot of agency and autonomy in how you choose to support your students; our leadership team trusts your instincts as an educator and respects your rapport with your students.

That said, we’re also here for you when you need a thought partner. If you have a question about how to work with a particular student, need support with a challenging situation, or just want to brainstorm, our co-directors, Tutor Supervisor, and Director of Instructional Support are all available! We love to talk about students (and we all tutor in addition to our other admin roles).

• Show up consistently and give your students your undivided attention and support.

• Be a patient, flexible, responsive, and encouraging tutor and mentor to your students.

• Communicate with your supervisor right away if you need additional support working with a student.

• Compose a brief session report to document each tutoring session.

• Coach your students on effective email communication with their teachers; for younger students, reach out to their teachers on their behalf.

• Communicate with our admin team about your schedule, timesheets, etc.

• Respond to occasional communication from caregivers and families.

• Peak demand for tutoring is M-Th, 4 pm - 7 pm.

• There may be opportunities for hours outside of these times; inquire if interested.

• Minimum hours for this position: 5 hrs/week. We may be able to offer you up to 20 hours per week.

• This is a seasonal position, from mid-August through the first week of June each school year.

We offer tutoring in-home (at the client’s home), at our Berkeley tutoring center, and online.

At this time, we are looking to hire tutors who can work a hybrid schedule, meeting with some students in person (either in-home and/or in-center) and some online.

**Unfortunately, if you are looking for a remote-only schedule, we will likely not be able to fill your schedule with students. Currently (as of fall 2022), we are seeing more requests for in-person tutoring, and while we do have some remote-only tutors on our staff, we are not seeing enough demand for online tutoring to hire any more remote-only tutors at the moment.**

We have a tiered pay rate scale based on education/experience in the field, which is summarized here.

Once you complete the initial three-month training period (during which you will meet with a supervisor every other week), your pay rate will increase by $2.

• We require proof of vaccination (currently 2-series vax) for everyone spending time in the tutoring center (staff and students).

• Well-fitting cloth, surgical, or n95 masks are encouraged, but not required, for everyone while indoors at the tutoring center. We provide surgical masks for students and employees who need them. We have a large courtyard space which is available for snack breaks and for students and tutors who prefer to work unmasked.

• We ask that families notify us if their child has COVID symptoms or a COVID exposure so that we can convert their tutoring to video chat.

• If a tutor is exposed to COVID, we convert all their sessions to video chat for at least 5 days.

We want you to feel safe at work, so please contact us right away if you have concerns, need an accommodation, or would like to make a request or recommendation regarding our COVID safety policies.

• Employee status

We hire tutors as employees, not as individual contractors. This means that CM handles payroll taxes for you. It also means that you accrue paid sick time at the rate of 1 hour for every 30 hours you work, up to 24 hours max per year, and that you are entitled to a 10-minute paid break during every work shift that exceeds 3.5 hours.

• Robust admin support

CM’s admin team handles much of the communication with families and caregivers and most of the administrative workload: questions about our services, intake, scheduling, billing, customer service, clarifying and enforcing our policies, etc. As a tutor, you have 1 floating paid admin hour per week to address any administrative matters that can’t be handled by the admin team (e.g., when a caregiver has a question about their student that only you can answer).

• Initial training + ongoing professional development

All new tutors attend an initial orientation training that covers our core philosophies of tutoring, including how to provide executive functioning support. New tutors then meet with a supervisor every two weeks for their first three months on staff.

We hold four all-staff meetings over the course of the school year on topics such as supporting neurodiverse students, time management, test preparation, mindfulness, motivation, teaching strategies, mentoring, self-advocacy, and managing stress and anxiety.

If you need further support, have a question about how to work with a particular student, or just want to brainstorm, our co-directors, Tutor Supervisor, and Director of Instructional Support are all available! We love to talk about students.

• Access to curriculum, materials, and resources

We have a bounty of educational games, manipulatives, school and art supplies, workbooks, handouts, and other resources for you to use with your students! Our home base in Berkeley is a spacious tutoring center with indoor and outdoor workstations. If you work online or in-home but are able to come to the center, you are welcome to check out materials to use with your students. We also have a Google Drive folder with online resources, and subscriptions to online services such as Kahoot Pro and Reading A-Z. You don’t have to navigate all these options on your own–our Director of Instructional Support is available to help connect you with resources or brainstorm ideas for supporting students.

• Individualized tutor-student matching process

Our co-directors work closely with the front desk to match you with students who will be a good fit for your experience, background, skills, and teaching style. We want to set you up for success and help you build a strong rapport with your students.

• Flexible schedule (within some constraints)

While your schedule does need to be consistent from week to week, you can set your own preferred work hours (for example, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4-7 pm).

• Supportive, collaborative community

We have an AMAZING staff of educators with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. Aside from designated time to collaborate with and learn from other tutors during quarterly staff meetings, our team stays connected via Slack, where we share challenges and proud-tutor moments, resources, funny student stories, and support. We also host a variety of informal outings (both virtual and in person) where tutors can get to know each other.

*We DON’T offer (but wish we could):

More robust benefits such as paid time off, health and dental insurance, or retirement benefits.

Flexibility around vacation times. Your students will come to rely on your consistent support, especially during finals week. We ask that you plan your vacations to align with times when Classroom Matters is closed (or, if that’s not possible, any time but finals week). We follow the Berkeley Unified School District schedule for most holiday closures.

Executive functioning refers to those cognitive processes that help us organize, plan, prioritize, get started, manage our time, self-regulate, shift, persist, and think about what we might need to do better next time. Especially right now, students are STRUGGLING with all of these. (Maybe you can relate.)

Executive functioning also has a problematic history intertwined with capitalism, white supremacy and ableism. We’re not here to browbeat our students into conforming to rules or standards. We’re here to support our students while they build metacognition and self-awareness and develop the skill of self-advocacy. For so many students, school (or some part of it) is not working out for them; they feel alienated, unintelligent, anxious, stymied, desperately bored, or some combination of the above. As tutors, we have the opportunity to become a trusted mentor and help students navigate the inconsistent and inequitable terrain of the education system.

We listen to our students and center their agency as learners. We help our students set realistic goals and make a concrete plan to achieve those goals. We share actionable strategies and tools and provide resources. We help them create a plan that makes the most of their individual strengths and skills. We follow up week by week, to see how the plan can be revised and improved.

We offer our students a place to unpack the school-related tasks and thoughts they’ve been avoiding all week (or all month, or all year). When our students feel overwhelmed or discouraged, we remind them of their past successes, of their many skills, strengths, and talents, friends, hobbies, and loved ones. We help them acknowledge and sit with any dark or bad feelings that come up. When we can, we help them reconnect with joy, curiosity, and interest.

• Check-in (~2-5 min)

• Check grades and all class websites in detail (~10-20 min)

• 2-3 minute movement break if it will benefit your student.

• Create or update your students’ detailed calendar/to-do list. Help your student be realistic about how long it will take to complete each assignment well. Make sure to roll over any work that didn’t get done previously (~10-20 min)

• 2-3 minute movement break

• Chunk of misc. content that will help your students’ study plan (~10-20 min)

• Session recap and report writing (also known as the cognitive wrapper) (~5 min)

• “You will be remembered by your students. You make an impact on your students beyond just teaching them.”

• “Building rapport with your students is immensely important. If they enjoy coming to tutoring, you will be able to teach them more.”

• “Listen to your students! It’s ok if your students have a bad day and you don’t get much done. Sometimes your students just need to vent. Get ready for some teenager emotions!“

• “You don’t have to pretend that you know everything! Model and collaborate on finding the answer with students.”

• “Be ok with admitting when you don’t know something. Be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage.”

• “There’s always a way to get a student to understand a topic. Be flexible.”

• “Make sure you are realistic about your availability.”

• “Ramp up your schedule slowly so that you don’t burn out.”

• “Don’t be nervous to connect with other tutors/admin. Everyone is here to help!”

• “Take advantage of all the support and the staff meetings.”

In lieu of a cover letter, we ask that you send us your responses to these three questions:

1. List the subjects and grade levels you can tutor.

2. Tell us a little bit about a standout moment, epiphany, or accomplishment in your prior experience as a tutor or teacher.

3. What else would you like us to know about you/your background and experience? Please use this space to convey anything not captured by your resume.