A pockmark on the face of education.

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Home : 2005 : April : 29

A pockmark on the face of education.
By anonymous

I'm a former Sylvan teacher and let me advise anyone who considers themselves to have a conscience to not seek employment at any branch of this horrible company. Sylvan masquerades as a supplemental education provider but
it is simply a business and that is how it is run. Students, teachers, parents---everyone is dealt with in the same manner and seen in the same way: as a source of income. Sylvan boasts about their "highly trained and certified teachers" but the truth is that on those rare occasions where Sylvan administrators do bother to train a teacher (which isn't often, as that costs money), it's just

you sitting in a room watching a dry as dirt video cassette. If you're a "highly trained and certified" Sylvan teacher, it's because you bring your own talent to a place that is quick to boast about it but slow to pay you for it. The pay, by the way, is abysmal. This company will flout the word "professional" when disciplining you for bringing up their casual disregard of the students that are already in the center (i.e. have already paid Sylvan). However, Sylvan will not pay you as the professional you are. With three kids to a table at $50 per student per hour, you'd think they'd be able to, but they don't. They do somehow have lots of money to offer their managers as incentives for bringing in new students by the droves. I might also mention that their center managers don't necessarily need to have a backgrounds in education at all. I wonder how a person without a teaching certificate can possibly hope to manage teachers. So maybe the admin. end is sufficiently detatched from the teaching end and that the managers are business professionals and the teachers are education professionals, right? Well, the truth is: "not really". See, as long as you're bringing in money to the company, as a manager, your degree could be in sociolgy, interpretive dance or you might not even have one at all! They don't care. Bring in the money and everything's fine. Yes, as an educator I'm a bit upset with this company that recommends needless services for bright children and doesn't accommodate other children with legitimate needs. But if you've made it to the end of my ranting, however, I can offer you some advice. This company gets a large number of referrals from schools themselves. If you're looking for work as a tutor, just drop some contact info off at the guidance departments of some schools in your area. Sylvan will waste your time and your talent. This company charges $50 per student per hour for 3 on 1 (student to teacher ratio) tutoring. This knowledge should allow you to charge $30 or $40 fairly guilt-free. It's a great deal for parents, too. So walk far away from this company and don't give it a second thought or a first one, for that matter. That's it. That's all I've got to say.