Session Lead Frequently Asked Questions

We have collected most frequently asked questions by session leads and tutors, and put together this information in a question answer format.

How can I recruit high school volunteers? (Link)

There are many ways you can advertise to recruit volunteers for tutors, videographers etc. Below are some of the ways we have found effective.
 
Librarians are your friends, and they are very resourceful to help you recruit volunteers. Talk to them about the following:
  • Post volunteer flyers at prominent locations so high school students can see it easily as they walk into the library, at the book checkout area, teens meeting area, etc.
  • Announce the volunteer opportunity on the library website.
  • Announce in other teens meetings at the library or send email to teens groups regarding this opportunity. You can look at the library website for teens meetings/activities.
  • Publish opportunity in the library newsletter.
  • If all else fails, you can have a table during the most traffic hours at library close to the entry door for a few hours with OneInMath flyers and talk to teens about the opportunity as they come in. This is usually very effective.
  • Seek other ideas with the librarians. They may have some specific ways to help.
In High Schools (check with librarians as they usually have relationship with neighboring schools)
  • Post opportunity in your and neighboring high schools both online and on notice boards prominently.
  • Write to principals/teachers of local high schools to post online and on notice boards
  • Talk to PTA of local schools and request to circulate the volunteer opportunity and/or announce it in their newsletter and pta meetings.
  • Post opportunity on PTA/Schools’ Facebook and Instagram page.
  • Encourage current and past tutors to recommend the opportunity to their friends

3rd Party Volunteer websites

  • Nextdoor.com. This is a great way to reach your neighborhood parent and high school students.
  • Share posts on social media like Instagram and Facebook.
  • volunteermatch.org. We can post volunteer opportunity here. Please talk to us if you want us to post.

Other Outreach

  • Look for other local social and religious organizations that might be effective in your area.
  • Post flyers at local shops. Some shops have areas to post flyers that are meaningful to local community.

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

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.
  • Write to the school district to post fliers on their online channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google Groups, etc. multiple times.
  • Write to district/state representative  to post details of the program on their online accounts like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. and to mention it in any emails they send out.

I want to cancel a scheduled class, what do I do? (Link)

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? (Link)

There would be times when you need to bring-on a new volunteer after the scheduled tutor 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? (Link)

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? (Link)

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.

There are open spots. Why did the system waitlist the students instead of assigning them to tutor(s)? (Link)

The system automatically processes the newly registered students daily. To do it, it will choose to run one of the two commands: Assign Students or Process Student Changes comamnd.

The Assign Students command is run every day except the two days after a class is held. The reason for that is incase you remove a student because of no-show, and it was done in error, the parent would complain, and you have a chance to reinstate the student before the open spot is filled with waitlisted students. In general, most libraries have waitlisted students, hence this policy helps managing and avoids parent frustration.

For the two days after the class is held, Process Student Changes command is run to process any registered students and waitlist them. Additionally, if you have made any changes in the roster tab to reassign tutors or change status etc., that is also processed.

If you don’t do anything, any open spots will get allocated to waitlisted and newly registered students automatically when the Assign Students command is run.  If you are in a situation where there are more open spots than waitlisted or newly registered students, you can run the Assign Students command manually and allocated students. Please also see #AssignStudentManually on how to assign students manually to specific tutors.. 

A tutor had fewer students than another tutor, but system assigned students to the other tutor with more students? (Link)

The system has an optimizing algorithm. It assigns students based on several criteria. One of the criteria it uses is to avoid assigning siblings to the same tutor as we have found it is best to keep siblings separate. Usually the algorithm will assign students by distributing the students evenly. However, in the case of siblings, the algorithm will assign the students to different tutors when possible. 

For instance, say Tutor A has 1 student, and Tutor B has 4 students and each tutor has capacity of 5 students. There are three newly  registered students S1, S2 and S3 and none of the students are siblings. Then the algorithm will allocate S1, S2, S3 to Tutor A. 

However, in the above example, if say S2 and S3 were siblings, then it would allocate S1 and S2 to Tutor A, and because there is an open spot with Tutor B, it would allocate S3 to tutor B.

Note that if in the above example, Tutor B had 5 students already, then S1, S2 and S3 would have been allocated to Tutor A, as there was no open spot with other tutors. In this case, the session leads can manually reassign students by moving students between Tutor A and Tutor B.

During diagnostics, a student can do basic operations in writing, such as one digit addition but cannot answer orally. What do I do? (Link)

This is an important use-case. There are many times a student might be shy, and not feel comfortable speaking orally. However, we know that over time if the student doesn’t say the answers aloud, their progress would be hindered.

In such cases, you have to make a call based on your assessment of the student. In general, It might be helpful to work on the Review packet corresponding to the given module in question as the first classwork.

Let us take a concrete example. Say the student is able to answer additions from Add 0-5 to 0-5 in writing, but is struggling when asked orally. You would keep assessing how far can the student answer in writing. Say the student can also answer Add 6-9 to 0-5, but struggles in writing the next module i.e. Add 6-9 to 6-9

Module Assessed Assessment Recommendation for classwork
Add 0-5 to 0-5 OK written, struggles orally

Review Module: Review Add Sub
Review Packet: Add 0-5 to 0-5

Add 6-9 to 0-5 OK written, struggles orally Review Module: Review Add Sub 
Review Packet: Add 6-9 to 0-5
Add 6-9 to 6-9 Struggles written & orally Regular Module to start with
Add 6-9 to 6-9: Add 6 (start with first packet in that module after you have done the review packets above)

You can give a review packet that corresponds to the module that student can do in writing, but not orally. So for Regular module Add 0-5 to 0-5, there is a packet within the Review Module: Review Add Sub: Add 0-5 to 0-5. It would cover all of the numbers between Add 0-5 to 0-5. Similarly for Add 6-9 to 0-5. This would be just one packet for each module for one class, and the tutor can work with the student to practice oral responses.

When tutors explain the review packet, they may want to work with the students orally and show them the patterns, with concepts like “one more”. For example what is 1 + 3 = 4, what would be 1 + 4?. 4 is one more than 3, and hence the answer would be one more than 4.  They may also use Number Line in the Help Sheets or Objects like pencils etc. to show the concept more visually.

In addition, tutor should explain to the parent the situation and recommend the parent to work with the student at home so they can get practice to answer orally. Explain that they can:

  1. Do it in a systematic way by working with the student by using problems in the sequence presented in the review packet. And,
  2. Also make it fun by asking questions in everyday life with visual examples with objects around the house, or in the car etc.

This should speed up student’s progress and you can move on to the appropriate module quickly.

A student has been absent for two classes consecutively.  Or a student was absent the first class. What do I do? (Link)

The program benefits the students only when they are committed to attending all classes. There are times when students cannot attend a class if they are sick, or an important commitment at school. To accommodate it, we allow a student to be absent for a maximum of one class. The rule is if the student is absent for the first class, or (2) If the student is absent for two classes consecutively, he/she is removed from the class and the spot is given to the next waiting student. 

The day after the class, an email is sent to the parents of all students who have been marked absent in the student tracker informing them of the student being absent (even if the parent informed the student will be absent by filling out the Student Absence Request Form). This is to ensure the parent is aware of the consequences of being absent the second time.

Depending on the response of the parent (or no response) to the absence email, you will make a final determination to remove the student or not. If it is the first time being absent, you will do nothing. But if it is the second time being absent consecutively (or absent the first class) you would remove the student. Please see How do I remove a student from the class for instructions on how to remove a student.

How do I remove (or withdraw) a student from the class? (Link)

  1. Go to the Roster tab. 
  2. Find the student in the roster, and in the Status column, change the status to “Removed”. Incase the parent has informed you to withdraw the student, then please change the status to “Withdrawn”.
  3. If there are multiple students to be removed, repeat the above step for all students to remove.
  4. From here, you can do one of the following:
    • Do nothing. The system will automatically run the Assign Students command in the morning (around 6am Pacific Time), and will remove the students and assign new students who are waiting in those spots.
    • Run the Process Student Changes command. This will remove the students, but will not assign waitlisted students to the open spots. Sometimes this strategy is useful incase you have made a mistake in determining the student has been absent for two classes. This gives a chance for the parent to respond before the open spot is filled up and you have no recourse.
    • Run the Assign Students command. This is same as what the system does automatically.