Getting started & first lesson

Hi and welcome to MYP Math Tutor. I'm Shannon and I'm here to guide you through the steps to get started with your child's first lesson. In this first part, we'll discuss the first emails you'll receive upon signing up, registration with Teachworks, our scheduling platform, and our payment process.

You'll receive two important emails upon confirming your lessons with us. The first email will welcome you to Teachworks, our scheduling platform. It will provide you with a special join link so that you can set up your login and password. This is optional, but we do recommend it so that you can manage all of your lessons through the platform rather than relying only on email. The second email is the confirmation of your lessons and includes the date and time of the first scheduled lesson, the link to join the call, and some additional information such as our cancellation policy and details about monthly invoicing. Your tutor will also be copied in on this email, so you'll have their contact details at that time.

Now, to access the Teachworks dashboard, you can either bookmark the link from the welcome email or log in directly from our website homepage. Here's what you see when you log into Teachworks. As a parent, the landing page is the calendar, where you can see lessons that have already happened and scheduled lessons for the future. The check mark beside the lesson means that the lesson was attended. The X means that the lesson was missed or it was a late cancellation. And the line through it means that the lesson has been cancelled.

If you wish to cancel a lesson, you can click on the lesson, select View, and then click the Cancel button. If it is within the 24-hour window where it would be a late cancellation, that button isn't there. Once you have successfully cancelled the lesson, you should receive an email confirmation, but you can also refresh the screen and it will show on the calendar as well.

If you would like to request an additional lesson or reschedule a lesson, you can click the green button, but we actually recommend that you click on the week view, select your tutor, and click Submit. You can actually see all of their availability here, so then you can select a time that works for you and probably works for the tutor to request a lesson. You can select your child's name, the rest will auto-populate, and then you can put in any comments as an option as well. Once you click Submit, the lesson is requested, and within 24 hours you should receive some feedback from your tutor on whether it's accepted or whether we can't reschedule that lesson.

At the end of each month, you'll receive an invoice via email, due within 14 days. Payments can be made easily through our secure platform with a variety of payment options.

In part two, we will discuss our interactive video call software, Lessonspace. Lessonspace is our interactive teaching platform, featuring video conferencing software, an unlimited whiteboard, and organized tabs for collaborative learning. It's where your child will learn and grow each week. There are several tools, including a writing pen, highlighter, drawing shapes, and typing. And if you happen to be using a writing tablet or an iPad, you will be able to draw with ease using the pen tool. But if you don't have any of these tools, it's okay. There's a screen capture tool that can take photos of your notebook for feedback. We also make use of tasks, either from the student's class or from our own resource bank, so that we can lead inquiry and exploration in real time.

You can join your lesson in two ways. First, check your email 6 hours before your lesson. You'll receive a reminder with a link to join the call. This is the same link that you received when the lesson was first scheduled. Or you could log into Teachworks, click on the lesson, select View, and then Launch Online Lesson Space. This will open the call in a new tab, where you can give access to your video and microphone and start your call.

Finally, in part three, we'll discuss how to prepare for the first lesson to get the most out of it. For an engaging learning experience, we do recommend an iPad or writing tablet, like the one by Wacom. It's hard to communicate your mathematical thinking and diagrams by typing and using computer tools. So while they're not necessary, these drawing tools really enhance the experience. If you have one around the house, you can fire it up for the first lesson.

To help us tailor our lessons, please email your tutor your child's syllabus, current work, or upcoming assessments in advance. If your child can do this on a weekly basis, it really helps the tutor prepare for an effective lesson.

So, what can we expect in the first lesson? Your tutor will introduce themselves, review materials you've shared, co-create some personalized learning goals, and get started. They'll start teaching topics right in the first lesson.

Thank you for choosing MYP Math Tutor. We're thrilled to support your child's math journey. If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to reach out.