What is expected of a volunteer tutor?
Volunteer tutors are an important part of the literacy service. The Volunteer Tutor plays an essential part in supporting a quality service.
Being a tutor
An adult literacy tutor supports adults to develop their reading, writing, spelling or numeracy skills to enable them to achieve personal and/or work related goals.
It is not necessary to be a teacher to be a volunteer (although teachers do volunteer), or to have a degree. It is not necessary to have any experience in this area as full training is provided by the literacy service.
If you can read, write and spell (at a good level), are a good communicator and confident in your ability to empathise with and understand adults with literacy difficulties, then you can help. Through training you can support adults who want to improve their literacy.
Commitment
- Tutors make a commitment of two years to the service.
- They attend initial training (approx. 25 hours in total) and undertake in-service training as required. Tutors work on average between 1-2 hours per week (this includes time working with the student and preparation time).
- They also attend support meetings with their Organiser.
- Attendance at the initial training course is required for all prospective tutors, regardless of their own background or skills.
- The training provided gives tutors an insight into the difficulties experienced by adults with literacy difficulties. Tutors also receive training in methodologies used to help adults improve their literacy skills.
- The service has a range of books, materials and software available to both tutors and students.
In-service training is also provided as tutors progress in their work. Topics provided for in-service can include:
- Making materials.
- Using computers in literacy work.
- Numeracy.
- Groupwork.
- Accreditation routes for students.
After initial training
After the initial tutor training programme the Organiser will begin matching and placing tutors with students. If there are no students available immediately, tutors may be asked to volunteer in other areas of the service's work, e.g. publicity, materials development, administration support (photocopying, organising teaching materials etc).
Progression routes for volunteer tutors
Accredited training for literacy tutors is provided by the Waterford Institute of Technology (W.I.T.)
Visit website:
Ask your Organiser for more information.
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