This is a new blog to share my experiences in starting up a home business of tutoring in phonics.

My biggest concern right now is getting established in my community. We have recently gone through a lot of job turmoil here in Campbell River,with our major industry (a pulp mill) closing its doors. The challenge now is to get the word out to this town that I do phonics in my home,that I do a great job, that their children will love coming, and that they will learn to read, write and spell while by the time they graduate from the program. Hopefully, they will then decide that this is something very important and they should part with their hard earned money to send their child to me.

My strategies so far have been that I am undercharging the other place that does phonics in town by a considerable margin. I hope to raise my prices each year by a little bit.

Last year I had 2 students that continued through the whole year. I started with 5. One boy was a special needs boy that I tutored for 2 months. The father thought that I would be able to get paid through B.C. child day care subsidy but that never panned out. After 2 months we realized that I would never get any money from them so they stopped coming. Normally, my policy is that the children pay at the beginning of each month. I only took him without paying because he was a bit of a family friend, I didn't mind contributing a bit to his education. The second child only came for a couple weeks and her mom decided that she didn't really need it, besides she was already paying for her tuition at a private school and it was just too much money. Another boy came for a few months but when I stopped working for his mom she pulled him from my phonics. I was left with my grandson, who went free, and one boy that continued until he had completed the whole program. At the end, he could read at a grade 3 level and he was in french immersion kindergarten

What I learned from all this is that you really need to have a lot of students to actually end up with people who really take it seriously and will continue until the end. I have heard that some others will go until they feel that their child can read and then pull them, without actually going to the end of the year.