How a remote session runs.
Most parents who write to me want in person and assume Zoom is the compromise. Even in Athens, most of my sessions are virtual, on purpose. Practically speaking there’s no difference, and here is what a session actually looks like, with the real pages from real sessions, so you can judge for yourself.
Student names removed from every page shown here. Families gave permission.
The setup is a shared page, not a video call.
One page, two pens
I share an iPad canvas over Zoom. The student sees my pen, I see theirs. Anything either of me writes is on the same page, the same way it would be at a table, except that neither of me is reading upside down.
Their homework, on screen
The student puts their worksheet, textbook, or practice test on the screen and I annotate it directly. No one retypes a problem. The page you see below is a student’s own homework, marked up during the session.
The student holds the pen most of the time
I write when I’m teaching. When we’re practicing, they write and I watch every step land, which is the part a worksheet turned in the next day can never show me.
Every page is saved
At the end of the session the whole canvas is exported and goes into the student’s file, along with a short note to the parent. Nothing lives on a whiteboard that gets erased.
What you’re looking at.
The black is the textbook. The green is me, boxing the form I’m after and pulling the factored expression out of the standard one. The purple and red are the student, working the domain and range with me watching. The yellow is what we agreed to highlight so it’s findable when they study.
Four colors is not decoration. It’s a record of who did what, and it’s how I know at the next session whether the student can do the purple part without me.
Mistakes are the material.
This is an error-analysis problem: the book shows a wrong solution and asks what went wrong. The student worked it live, circled the sign error the book planted, and then redid the slope from the two points. The red X on the book’s work is theirs. That moment, catching someone else’s mistake because you understand the rule, is the whole point of the exercise, and it happens on screen exactly the way it happens on paper.
Where remote is honestly different.
Rapport takes one session longer
With younger students, the first meeting is a little stiffer on a screen than across a table. By the second session it isn’t.
The scratch work can’t hide
At a table a student can cover a page with their arm. On a shared canvas I see every step as it’s written, which is better for teaching and occasionally uncomfortable for the student. That’s fine.
Nobody drives anywhere
A session at 7:30 on a school night is possible because nobody is in a car. Families in Milton and Watkinsville get the same hour.
In person, case by case
I do meet students in Athens when it’s the right call, at a different rate. It is the exception, and I’ll say on the first call whether I think it matters for your student.
“I was a bit skeptical about virtual tutoring. However, the amount of knowledge and skills my son gained from their sessions was remarkable.”
Jackson L, parent
What I record and keep
With your permission, remote sessions are recorded so I can prepare the next one. The canvas is exported every time. Both are kept on the schedule in the privacy policy, and you can decline recording without it changing the tutoring.