For Tutors

Educators or speech-language pathologists with an active Ohio Department of Education license who are passionate about literacy and want to help adults improve their reading, writing, and communication skills are encouraged to join the platform! Retired educators are also welcome with a current BCI background check.*

Materials are not provided. All candidates must be comfortable administering their own diagnostics, evaluating results, and prescriptively tailoring instruction to meet the needs of each Adult Learner.

*Immediate family members, or anyone living in the same household as an approved Adult Learner, cannot apply to be tutors. Immediate family members include the Adult Learner’s siblings, parents, or grandparents by blood, marriage, or adoption. Businesses cannot be tutors for the Adult Literacy Ohio Program. The site is built for individual contractors only. The person advertised on the platform must be the person who provides services. Tutors must commit to providing in-person services. Tutors are independent contractors and not employees of DSACO.

Currently, we do not provide materials. Instead, we invest in recruiting educators and speech-language pathologists with access to tools and resources. We acknowledge that each Adult Learner has unique strengths and areas of growth. What may work well for one Adult Learner may be ineffective for another. The goal of this program is to provide a variety of options so that each Adult Learner has access to different choices.

Goals should be developed in partnership with the Adult Learner and grounded in the Big 5 of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension). Use the pre-assessment tools of your choice to determine what areas your Adult Learner needs to address as they relate to these Big 5 components.

Here is one example:

Adult Learner Jake says that his main goal with participation is to read aloud to younger children and to ask for help at work less. Tutor pre-assessments indicate that he needs to work on fluency, comprehension, and word attack skills for more challenging words.

The tutor established two SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals for monthly data tracking and submitted them to Adult Literacy Ohio team for review along with a proposed data management strategy:

1. 1. Jake will engage in discussions and respond to comprehension questions over the book/passage he has read aloud with 80% accuracy, three out of four attempts without shaking his head (I don’t know) and with no more than two guided prompts. Data samples to include comprehension quizzes.
   2. Using Aimsweb grade level 4 reading passages, Jake will read 72 or more words with at least 90% accuracy. Data samples to include Aimsweb passages with corresponding percentages of accuracy.

With the help of his tutor, Jake is now ready to read aloud to younger students with increased fluency, a better grasp of comprehension skills – and the CONFIDENCE to take on this task.

Please remember that Adult Learners in this program come in with various skill sets – and goals with participation. We trust you to use your professional discretion and expertise in implementing different strategies to see what is effective for your Adult Learner. That said, we know that progress can take time. Sometimes, tasks that seem to be mastered one week are forgotten the next, so regular review is needed. It is important to teach generalization of learning and skills to new situations. If you come to a point where the established goals are creating frustration and not fostering a positive relationship with literacy, do not hesitate to contact Adult Literacy Ohio. We can work together to develop new goals more compatible with the Adult Learner’s needs, desires, and strengths.

Tutors are paid only when Adult Learners book paid sessions using their DaySmart account. We cannot back-pay tutors for any appointments, not on the calendar. Please do not accept appointments not scheduled in the DaySmart scheduling system.

$50

• Bachelor’s Degree in General / Special Education or Speech and Hearing Sciences
• *ODE Licensure Required (Certified Teachers & Pupil Services Licensures allowable)

$75

• Master’s Degree or higher OR BA + 21 years of teaching experience
• *ODE Licensure Required (Certified Teachers & Pupil Services Licensures allowable)

**Multi-Age Licensures for Foreign Languages allowable IF candidate also has tutoring experience with English. Retired teachers are welcome with a current BCI Background Check.