Session Lead Frequently Asked Questions

How can I recruit high school volunteers?

There are many ways you can advertise to recruit volunteers for tutors, videographers etc. Below are some of the ways we have found effective.

 

How can I recruit students from kindergarten to 3rd grade?

Again, your local librarian is your friend. Talk to the librarian about the following:

• Post student registration flyers prominently so parents can see it easily as they walk into the library
• Add the OneInMath opportunity in the event calendar on the website and in print
• Announce in other kids activities like reading clubs, story time, etc. Many pre-school kids will have older siblings.
• Publish it in the library newsletter
• Have a table during the most traffic hours at library close to the entry door of the library for a few hours with OneInMath flyers and talk to parents about the opportunity as they come in.

In Elementary Schools (check with librarians as they usually have relationship with neighboring schools)

• Post opportunity in neighboring elementary schools both online and on notice boards prominently
• Write to principals/teachers of local elementary schools to share with students/parents of the opportunity
• Talk to PTA of local schools and request to circulate the opportunity or announce it in their newsletter and pta meetings.
• Post on the PTA / School’s Facebook page, Instagram page etc.

Other Outreach

• Post on Nextdoor.com. It is usually quite effective.
• Post flyers at local social and religious organizations locations.
• Post flyers at local shops. Some shops have areas to post flyers that are meaningful to local community.

Library does not want to print math sheets, what do I do?

The program is a partnership between library, parents and volunteers where every partner has a specific role to play. OneInMath has been popular with parents and libraries it runs in, due to the fact that every student works at their own individual math ability, and we pay special attention to assess the student’s initial math level irrespective of grade, and tutors continuously work with the student to provide the individualized experience. This has benefitted tremendously to build confidence in students and in building a strong math foundation.

To meet this goal, we have to print math sheets that are specific to each student for every class. It ranges from 15 to 20 sheets per class per student.

1. The program is completely free, OneInMath has no source of income as we do not sell anything to the parents or volunteers.
2. OneInMath pays for developing and maintaining the OneInMath software (over 60,000 lines of code), for hosting the application, website etc. 
3. Library supports the program by providing support for printing. The cost is small compared to the benefits. For a capacity of say 25 students for the class, we need to print 25×20 = 500 sheets per class. On an average, the actual cost of printing this by the library is no more than $10-$20 per class.
4. OneInMath believes that focussing on early childhood can magnify the returns of having students who are more confident in later years as they grow up and increase the probability of choosing STEM. According to a research paper by professors at Carnegie Mellon, students who are weak in math in early years remain weak when compared to students who have a stronger foundation.
5. With OneInMath program, Library serves to address one of the critical need of the community and the country.
   1. Fear of math in early years contributes in only 16% (Education for Global Leadership) of the high school students choosing STEM.
   2. USA is falling behind (ranked 38 out of 71 countries) compared to other countries in student’s math capability. If USA falls behind, we all suffer over time.
   3. By supporting this program to strengthen the math foundation, they are helping to change the likelihood of more students choosing STEM which has significant economic impact. This in turn has a long term impact in growing the USA economy, as well as reduce crime in the neighborhood. According to a study by McKinsey Global Institute USA can add  $1.2 trillion/year to USA GDP by 2030.

Note: If library hesitates to print because the staff needs to be involved to print, then there are two alternatives you can suggest. 

1. They can provide access to a staff printer to couple of volunteers who can then print as needed.
2. Buy a dedicated portable printer, and provide supplies like paper, and 2 sets of ink cartridges, and you and your volunteer team can manage the printing yourself.

You may also ask the librarian if there are funds raised by library volunteers and if they can fund the cost. Many libraries have “Friends of the Library” program that raises funds to support such activies.

If needed, please contact us, and we can be in the meeting to help convince the librarian.

I want to cancel a scheduled class, what do I do?

Usually, the class schedule is decided before the session starts. However, there are times when a class needs to be cancelled due to reaosns beyond your control. Some examples are extreme weather,  and unplanned room unavailability by library. Very rarely, there might be other reasons like significant number of volunteer absences due to sickness that the students cannot be absorbed by other tutors.

If you have to cancel the class, please follow the steps below:

• Inform OneInMath central team of the class being cancelled with the date of the class and the reason. The team would update the records, and mark the class as “No Class” and update student tracker accordingly.
• Coordinate with the OneInMath team who would send out an email to all volunteers, students and librarian that the class is being cancelled with the reason. Usually, the team is able to send the email out if there is enough time.
• Note: If the cancellation happens on the same day of the class, please send out an email yourself to all volunteers, students and librarians informing of the class cancellation along with the reason for it.

How do I accept a new volunteer after scheduled training is over?

There would be times when you need to bring-on a new volunteer after the scheduled tuto training is over. This can happen when: 

• You were short of tutors, and a new volunteer signs up after the scheduled training, or a volunteer was not able to attend the scheduled training.
• You want to replace an existing tutor for some reason.

In these cases, a volunteer can take a Makeup Tutor Training. The steps are as follows:

Steps:

1. Make sure the Volunteer is already registered on OneInMath website. If not, please direct the volunteer to register first at https://oneinmath.com/register-volunteer/.
2. Open your designated Student Tracker.
3. Go to the Volunteers tab, and select the volunteer you want to take the Makeup Tutor Training.
4. Run the command Send Makeup Volunteer Training to Selected Volunteers. This would send an email to the volunteer with detailed instructions on taking the makeup training. It will also ask the volunteer to send an email to the session manager/leads.
5. The volunteer would go through the training on their own. It is a set of video and question/answers. As volunteer goes through the training, and fills out the questionnaires, you will receive a copy of the answers.
6. The last step of the training instructs the volunteer to send a email to the lead informing that they have completed the training. Lookout for the email. If you don’t receive in reasonable time, you may need to follow up to ensure the volunteer has completed the training.
7. Once you receive the email from the volunteer, and have reviewed the answers from the questionnaire, please inform the OneInMath team of the same along with the role you want to assign (Tutor, Floating Tutor, Videographer, etc.)
8. OneInMath team will mark the volunteer as Active, and assign the requested Role.

You are now set. The OneInMath System will automatically assign any waitlisted and new students to the new tutor.

If you want to move some of the existing assigned students from other tutors to the new tutor, please follow the steps on How do I move Students to another tutor?.

How do I move student(s) to another tutor?

If a student has been assigned to tutor, and you want to reassign the student to another tutor follow the steps below. There are many reasons to move students to another tutor

1. Open your designated Student Tracker.
2. Go to Roster tab.
3. In the row that is for the student you want to move
   1. Change the Tutor Name. Note that First name and Last Initial, First letter of both first name and last name should be in uppercase, rest of the letters should be in lowercase. For example: if the tutor name is John Smith, enter JohnS).
   2. Change the tutor email in the Volunteer Email column to the email address of the tutor you want to move the student to.
   3. If the status in the Status column is not already marked as Assigned, change the status to Assigned.
4. You may repeat steps above for as many students as needed.
5. After you are done, run the command Process Student Changes. This will move the students to the appropriate tutor(s).

A student just registered. I want to assign to a specific tutor, but student doesn’t show in the Roster. What do I do?

The OneInMath System processes registered students once a day in the morning around 6am Pacific time. However, there might be occasions when you do not want to wait, and want to assign newly registered student right away. One such situation arises when you have openings, and you are accepting walk-in students. 

Below are the steps to assign to a specific tutor once student has registered.

1. Ask the Parent to register student on oneinmath.com website (If parent has registered skip to next step).
2. Open your designated Student Tracker.
3. Confirm that Parent has registered by going to Students tab and looking for the student name is showing up. If not, ask Parent to register.
4. Run the command Assign Students. When asked to send email, say NO.
   • This will assign students (if you have openings) to an existing tutor with the least number of students. If you don’t have openings it would waitlist them.
   • Note the command will show you what action the command is going to take including who will be assigned, who will be waitlisted etc. before it makes any modifications. Please make a note of the student names that are being modified. You would need them to send a status email to parents in later steps.
   • Note that if the assigned tutor is the tutor of your choice, or you don’t care to assign student to specific tutors, then you may answer YES when asked to send email, and you will be done. You can skip rest of the steps.
5. Go to Roster tab.
6. Verify the student has been assigned.
7. If you want to change the assigned tutor, i.e. move the student to a different tutor, please follow the steps on How do I move Students to another tutor?. 
   • Note the students who you moved in this steps. The parents would receive email of the status changes/assignments when you follow this step.
8. Now, determine the students who have not been sent an email from Step #4 (Assign Students), and remove the names who got emails sent in Step #7 (moving students).
9. For all such students who have not been sent an email, please select the students who need to be sent the status email, and run the command Send status email to selected parents. This will send the status email as appropriate.
   • Note if the students you need to send the email are not in contiguous rows, you will need to repeat this command multiple times for each set of students in contiguous rows.