Hire-a-teacher

[maggijo]

I am interested in offering my Spanish teaching services to local preschools and elementary schools without a foreign language program already in place. My question for you all is, how much would you charge for something like this? I also tutor; do you recommend that I charge the same for this type of instruction? I'm not sure where to look for information like this. Any advice would be helpful.

Thank you!

[Krafty]

First, I guess, are you thinking of teaching every student or just offering an extra-curricular class to select students for an additional fee? If your goal is to add a Spanish class to a school that does not already have one, I would think you would need to focus on that one school and write a proposal to add it to their curriculum next year. You really need to research the schools in your area, what they offer, teacher salaries, etc before you can develop a plan and decide what you can offer/what you want to do. You have a lot of options, but may have to find that one school where you will fit.

Public school systems and private schools are different animals. Our public schools do not offer foreign language until middle or high school, nor do I think just one elementary could implement it - it would have to be a system-wide change and require multiple teachers (we have 17 elementary schools in our system - too much for one teacher to cover). You might want to focus on private institutions, though many of them have foreign language in place already (ours start in 1st grade). Perhaps one of them would want to add additional teachers or flex the schedule or add to additional grades.

If you wanted something a bit more unique and something you might be able to better flex to your personal schedule, look into offering language instruction at daycares (we have a local karate teacher that offers lessons during the day are multiple daycares - he does two or so centers a day, $5/lesson bought in 4 week increments). With the younger ages you are aiming for exposure vs fluency. If this appeals to you, create a brochure, find some daycares willing to offer this to their students as an extra activity (since their schedules are pretty wide open, it should be easy to fit in). I would not go younger than the three year olds in that scenario. Make sure you publish a schedule and have a policy for making up missed days in case of weather emergencies.

The private school I attended had French classes for all grades, including preschool (3 - 4 year olds). We learned songs, days of the week, months, colors, weather - many of the same things we were already learning in English. Madeline was read to us in French long before it was a popular TV show. I retain much of what I learned then until this day, yet rarely have opportunity to use it. On the other hand the advanced French I took in high school is long forgotten.

I hope something in this was of value to you. Good luck.