Being a math tutor in Montreal or other multicultural city is very tricky, because you have to worry about other factor then the normal one when you start a tutoring business.

Montreal demographics

Lets start with a quick refresh on the demographics situations in Montreal. In 2006, Statistics Canada, listed around 600,000 persons that can be consider like visible minority. In this group, you have Chinese people, people from South and Southeast Asia, Haitian people, Filipino and the person from Latin America. To this people you have to add the Italian (around 260,000 persons), the Arab (around 100,000 persons), etc. All that in a city of 3,588,520 persons. Each community come with their belief and habit, and all that translate in different way of thinking the education of their kids.

Being a math tutor in Montreal

This is where it all gets difficult. If you want to be a math tutor in Montreal you need to learn the background of your student. First of all, you need to know is linguistic skill. Does he speak English, Mandarin, French, Spanish, etc. at home? Does he go to French or English school? Since when does he live in Montreal or Canada? Where did he live before? All that will affect the way you teach the student, because often his math problem can come from his difficulty to understand English or French. He got some really good arithmetic skill, but he doesnt understand the problem. Thats why I love to start by, first, talking to my student just to know hes linguistic level, and, second, to tell them all the synonym of some math term. By example, Ill tell them that 5+5, can be 5 plus 5 equal 10, add 5 to 5, addition 5 to 5, or the 5-5, can be 5 minus 5, subtract 5 to 5, etc. This very simple thing will save you and them a lot of time.

After the linguistic part is settle, youll have to know about is culture and how his parent think the education of their children. For some, you dont need to give them homework, just the fact that they are doing an extra one or two hours of math by week is enough. For other culture, they want you to give some homework or a lot of homework. Its very important to put your belief apart from that. When I talk to my relative about what I do, they all think that kids need to play and weekend isnt from homework. Its their right to think that, but some parent think that three hours a week to guarantee their kids future isnt that bad. Both of them are right if you ask me, so you must not judge or interfere.

Thats just two examples about how the context influences the role of the math tutor. You have to be aware of them when you teach and when you shop for a tutor or tutoring center. Like as always like to say: when youre teaching math, the most important variable is the children. Always start with them, their background and their goal.