Onboarding Series

Mentors Expectations

Key processes that ensure smooth scheduling, communication, and payment

Overview

At Acuity, we outline clear expectations for all students and parents that we work with. Likewise, as staff, we have to uphold these expectations as well.

Acuity always strives for empowerment, and this is no different for our amazing mentors. We want you to feel encouraged to add your personal flavour to your work and bring everything that makes you unique to the table.

However, there are some areas where we need uniformity and clear expectations.

These are enforced with the idea of making scheduling, communication, and payment as simple and stress-free as possible for everyone, including you!

Woman participating in a virtual meeting, taking notes during a video conference on a laptop.

Client Expectations

For full transparency, these are the exact expectations shared with all parents. To be effective, they must be understood from your end as well.

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Through working with us as a part of any of our programs, you are agreeing to commit to weekly sessions. In our compass and mastery programs, we have taken the time to thoughtfully design a specific sequence of lessons around a recurring weekly schedule. Whilst the proficiency program offers more flexibility, it is still a strong expectation that you meet with your mentor on a weekly basis. This approach maximises your learning by building a consistent habit and allowing you enough time to systematically deepen your understanding of concepts. Many of our mentors are also full-time students who rely on us for their sole source of income, so keeping a consistent schedule makes things more predictable for them. Of course, things won’t always fit neatly into your schedule and you are welcome to move and reschedule sessions by contacting your mentor.

Before every session, you should receive both an email reminder 12hrs in advance, plus a calendar reminder from Microsoft Teams 15mins prior. The onus is on the student to ensure they are on time for each session. For missed lessons, refer to our our Cancellation Policy. It is expected that you spend a few minutes before each tutoring session preparing your work for that lesson. Sending any questions or assignments to your mentor in advance is really helpful. Since everything operates online, please also ensure that your computer is charged.

For consistency, fairness, and scheduling logistics, it is important that we keep lessons to the scheduled time frame. As such, your mentor will start wrapping up the session with 5mins left to ensure there is adequate time to summarise the main takeaways and leave space for any additional questions. This may mean occasionally leaving a certain question or section unfinished and to be continued next time.

Although our mentors would love to always help you outside outside of scheduled session times, they each have their own commitments and priorities, so it’s important to set some boundaries. For general or subject-specific questions, please send them an email. If you need to cancel or re-schedule a lesson, you are able to directly text your mentor, bearing in mind our Cancellation Policy. For urgent matters, administrative questions, or other enquiries, please email [email protected].

If you reach out to your mentor with a question, you can expect to hear back from them within 24hrs. If you have not heard back from them within this timeframe, or you have an urgent issue, please email [email protected] directly.

As mentors, we want to prioritise innovation, empowerment, and deep understanding. To foster this, we need to build a strong and open connection between student and mentor. In all sessions, attitudes that we expect everyone to have include active listening, honesty, and the ability to question everything. If either of us don’t know the answer to something, we should feel comfortable sharing that, asking questions, and trying to find a solution together.

We really value your feedback and take it on board seriously. After each lesson, your mentor takes the time to send a summary email to you with points of constructive criticism, encouragement, and advice. But it’s not a one-way street. At any time, you’re welcome to email [email protected] and let us know how you’re feeling – whether we’re doing something well, or if there’s things we need to improve upon. Likewise, if things aren’t clicking with your current mentor, please reach out and we can seek out an alternative.

Relevant Policies

Cancellation Policy

Your Expectations

To provide the best service possible, there are a few key things that we require of you.

In being a part of our team, you agree to adhere to the professional conduct rules stipulated in your contract and our terms and conditions.

The guidelines below are more specific practical expectations in day-to-day operations.

If you ever have any questions, or you face with a situation where you’re unsure what is expected of you, please just email [email protected].

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Your most important role outside of actually mentoring and tutoring students.

These are the non-negotiable tasks:

Make sure every single lesson is recorded in Microsoft Teams. Not only is this a necessity for child safety measures, but it also means that all sessions can be reviewed, and can provide an excellent resource for students to re-watch.

Send a summary email to student and parent straight after each session in Teachworks. I would highly recommend typing this out during the lesson itself if there is any downtime, or even dictating immediately after the lesson. You are paid based on the number of completed sessions in Teachworks. Please make sure these are up-to-date so that you can be paid accurately.

Ensure that the session is scheduled correctly both in Microsoft Teams and Teachworks. Automated reminders are sent out before each lesson. Recurring meetings with your student for the same time each week will automatically be created on your behalf. If you have agreed to reschedule a session, moving that meeting to the correct time on both platforms is your responsibility. Please just move around the session that has already been created by us, rather than making a new meeting link yourself. Having reminders sent out to parents for the wrong time slot creates confusion for everyone.

When tutoring, create a OneNote notebook for each student, and share this with the student, parent, and [email protected]. Using OneNote enables both you, the student, and the parent to review all historical content and lesson notes from previous meetings. We really value this ability, alongside the flexibility that OneNote offers for being able to annotate and draw effectively. It brings continuity to all sessions and provides an elegant medium for showing your working—both necessities for next-level tutoring in our eyes!

Likewise, when mentoring, please actively use and keep the Google Doc, spreadsheet, and calendar that you share with your student up to date.

Please notify us if you have concerns! Sometimes things don’t go perfectly. If you come away from a session and have any concerns, specific comments, or important notes, please let us know. Anything notable from each lesson should be included in the internal notes section of your Teachworks summary.

We respect the boundaries between your time and work time. We also trust your own preferences when it comes to structuring tutoring lessons. As such, we don’t expect you to prepare extensive resources and study plans in advance, but you’re absolutely welcome to if you’d like. If a student goes out of their way to email you ahead of time with specific things they’d like to work through in the lesson, it would be recommended that you take a look at these resources in advance.

Most importantly, just make sure you are at every session on time with a charged computer and a stable internet connection. We endorse scheduling lessons back-to-back as this allows you to condense your work into larger blocks, but this means you start should wrapping up everything 5mins before the end, leaving yourself time to send off the summary email, grab some water, and maybe do some stretches before coming back to your desk.

We appreciate that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to tutoring and we strongly encourage you to bring your own unique ideas to each lesson. That being said, there are certain principles that we strongly advocate for, including:

Encourage critical thinking and nuanced understanding over rote learning.

Use positive reinforcement and constructive feedback.

Individualised teaching tailored to each student.

Student empowerment.

Transferrable skills and strategies over tips and tricks.

Honesty and transparency.

Try things. Fail more often and come up with lots of bad ideas. Eventually you’ll start coming up with great ideas.

Use respectful language, always.

Try your best to understand your student beyond just their academics.

Periodically, we may review some of your lessons and provide you with some feedback to take on board. We may also encourage some self-reflection from time-to-time about your performance and potential areas for improvement.

You may communicate with students and parents either through email or by text message, however email is preferred except in urgent circumstances. Please use your Acuity email address for all correspondence related to your work.

It is expected that you reply to any questions sent to you by a student or parent within 24hrs. However, you’re not expected to answer questions outside of work hours which could otherwise be addressed in your actual session; for example, someone asking you to help with their homework.

If you need to reschedule a session, you must communicate this to the student with at least 24 hours notice and update both the Microsoft Teams and Teachworks calendars 24 hours in advance as well. By doing this, you maintain the flexibility of being able to adjust sessions, whilst minimising the risk of last-minute cancellations.

Whilst you are not required to be really formal, it is expected that you maintain a professional tone in all communication with students or parents.

Apologies for the Audio Quality With These

Using Teachworks

Navigating Microsoft Teams

Creating OneNote Workspaces