Becoming a Tutor

1. Attend a Volunteer Orientation

Click here for a schedule of sessions

2. Obtain and complete a Volunteer Application Packet when you attend volunteer orientation.

The Application Packet includes:

Volunteer Application Form

Tutoring Policy and Procedures

Tutor Certification Policy

3. Interview with the Volunteer/Community Resources Coordinator

Lisa Kemper – 882.8006 – lkemper@lovetoread.org

4. Background Check

You will be required to submit to a Criminal Background Check. You will receive all applicable information at your training.

5. Attend a Volunteer Training

After attending an orientation, if you would like to become a tutor, you sign up for 15 hours of training in either Basic Literacy or ELAA. A schedule of upcoming trainings can be found here. Pre-registration is required.

Cost of the training is $50, which helps with the expense of training, materials and the criminal background check.

During the training, you will have the opportunity to select a student (or a center, if you are in the ELAA program). You may use our extensive library for materials, and our staff is available during our office hours to answer your questions. We have two photocopiers for you to copy materials.

LVT offers a variety of professional development sessions to help you understand and better assist your student(s). While you tutor, you’re required to attend at least one session a year. (This is actually a ProLiteracy America requirement that we must meet to maintain our ProLiteracy America accreditation.)

As additional support to our Basic Literacy and ELAA programs, we offer computer training. If you have computer skills that you would like to share with others, please let us know. Or, if you would like to improve your computer skills, we can help you. Our computer students are both other tutors and our students. This is generally done one-on-one, in our LVT computer lab or at a library. We do have one ELAA course at a library where computer training has been integrated.

If you prefer not to tutor, we have many other volunteer opportunities.

Please know that, as a tutor, you will be helping someone to improve his or her life – and enriching yours at the same time.

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England. We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.