Opinion Teach for America

Remote tutoring of American students in math,English and science is a trend nearly as old as outsourcing itself. But the latest twist to that story is that tutors like Vijaya Kumar are working out of the comfort of their own homes and that practice is poised to scale. Kumar,for instance,does not have to dress up or commute to work. She just fires up the computer in the cozy confines of her residence in Lucknow’s Gautam Buddh Marg and she is ready to go.

That small mutation could potentially open up a world of employment opportunities to qualified Indians who are homebound by choice or by circumstance. It has become a career lifeline to those stuck in India’s small towns where job options are limited. Already,TutorVista’s tutors based in Faridkot (Punjab),Barmer (Rajasthan),Kohima (Nagaland),Kasargod (Kerala) and Anakapalli (Andhra Pradesh) are coaching American students from kindergarten to college. “Technology is making communication from small town-India to anywhere-United States seamless,” says Krishnan Ganesh,CEO and founder of TutorVista.

Ganesh says TutorVista is India’s largest remote employer. The company currently employs 1,500 tutors,and only half are in India’s eight largest cities. Other tutors are scattered across 120 locations — towns and even villages — across India. Many of them are not teachers by profession. Subject knowledge,a degree,a computer and a broadband internet connection are the only pre-requisites.

Among the tutors are people who do not want or cannot get a full-time job.There are women taking a career break,stay-at-home moms,retired people and even fresh engineering graduates. There are physically disabled tutors,women with very small children and those confined to the house by illness.

TutorVista takes a few weeks to provide online training to the freshly-recruited tutors,helping them get comfortable with the whiteboard and digital pen,the subjects and the transition to international teaching methods. Voice and accent training is rarely necessary as the teaching is mainly through web chat and writing on the whiteboard.

The eminently qualified Vijaya Kumar,who has Masters degrees in both English and education and has taught in international schools in Dubai and China,says tutor outsourcing has been a boon in her life. “Choices are limited in Lucknow,” says Kumar whose students call her “Y- jaa-ya” or ‘Ms Koo-mar’. Kumar spends her days caring for her sick mother and her aged father. She spends her nights helping upgrade her students’ college grades and earns a regular income of around 15,000 rupees for four to five hours of work daily.

Now,the economic downturn is dramatically pushing up the demand for tutors from India.

“Education has become America’s safety anchor in these brutal times,” says Ganesh. Recession has created a blistering demand in the United States for Tutorvista’s “cheap,personalised and private” tutoring model where each student pays $99 (under 5,000 rupees) a month for unlimited coaching.

To meet the spurting demand,TutorVista’s tutor operations head Rama Harinath is on a “manic hiring spree”. Harinath is tapping India’s remotest corners to recruit and train another 1,500 teachers,doubling the company’s tutor count. He has to make it all happen in the next eight weeks,in time for the spring academic session in American schools.

So,in the next few weeks hundreds of fresh recruits from India’s cities and remote towns who have never before spoken to a foreigner will learn to use words like “awesome” and “terrific” instead of “correct” and “good”. They will illustrate examples with pizza and doughnuts instead of cows and mangoes.

Who could have imagined a few years ago that an American teenager could say “Dude” and “Cool!” to a Sukanya peddamma from Nalgonda or a Ramakrishna mama from Dindigul.

saritha.rai@expressindia.com