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. In practice there’s no difference. Below are 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. Both pens write on the same page, as they would at a table, except that nobody is reading upside down.
Their homework, on screen
The student puts their worksheet, textbook or practice test on the screen and I mark it up directly. Nobody retypes a problem. The page below is a student’s own homework, annotated during the session.
The student holds the pen most of the time
I write when I’m teaching. During practice they write and I watch every step as it goes down, which a worksheet turned in the next day can never show me.
Every page is saved
At the end of the session I export the whole canvas into the student’s file and send the parent a short note. 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 while I watch. The yellow marks what the student and I agreed to highlight, so it’s easy to find when they study.
The four colors are a record of who did what. At the next session they tell me 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. Catching someone else’s mistake because you understand the rule is the point of the exercise, and it happens on screen the same way it happens on paper.
Where remote is 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’s the exception, and I’ll tell you 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.