Teachers and private tutors
Email courses for teachers and private tutors
Last reviewed 18 September 2026
The address on a tutor's list almost always belongs to an adult, and the learner is often a child who should not appear in your records at all. Write the five days for the adult, make each one ten minutes of something that could happen at the table anyway, and collect no name, school, age or photograph. Day six offers a named slot at a stated rate, or an honest waiting list, because availability is what a tutor actually sells.
Your reader is tired, it is half past eight in the evening, and the last thing they have energy for is a task somebody else has set them. Everything about the format has to be arranged around that, because a course that feels like homework is deleted by the person who most needed it.
The address belongs to an adult and the learner usually does not
Almost every tutoring list is a list of adults, and the person the teaching is about is frequently a child who signed up for nothing. That separation constrains the whole format: the emails are addressed to one person and are about another, and the second person's details have no business being in your system at all.
So collect nothing about the learner. Not a name, not a school, not a date of birth, not a photograph of their work. A year group as one optional choice is as far as it is reasonable to go. There is no email you will write that is improved by holding a child's details, and a great deal that goes wrong when you do.
Where the learner is an adult, in a language course, an exam retake or a professional qualification, the reader and the student are the same person and the constraints about evening energy still apply almost unchanged. Adults studying at night are as tired as the parents and considerably more embarrassed.
What the five days should teach
Teach the adult to notice something, and give them one ten-minute thing to do with it. Not a worksheet, not a practice set, not anything that requires a printer. The test for each day is whether it could happen at a kitchen table inside a conversation that was going to occur anyway.
Aim at the diagnosis rather than the syllabus. A parent does not need to be taught mathematics. They need to be able to hear which of three methods is being used and what each one says about where the understanding stops. That is a skill they can use for years, and it is the part a tutor genuinely knows that a textbook cannot supply.
Never set a task that can be failed. If day three produces a result the adult reads as bad news about their child, you have made an anxious evening worse and the course gets abandoned along with the feeling. Every day should produce information, framed as information, with a plain statement that the thing being looked for is common.
Day four is the mistake the adult makes with the best intentions: correcting the answer rather than the method, or stepping in at the moment before the learner gets there themselves. It is the most useful email in the sequence, it is recognisable to every parent in the country, and it is the one that gets read out to another parent at the school gate.
The objection your readers arrive with
It sounds like homework, for them. That objection arrives before a word of the content has been read, and it is why a well-written tutoring course goes unopened. An adult who has just finished negotiating one evening of reading practice is not looking for a five-day commitment of their own.
Beat it with the number and with the timing. Ten minutes, at the table, nothing printed and nothing bought, said on the form and repeated at the top of every email. Keep the tasks conversational: the best version of day one is a question asked over dinner, where the adult listens rather than teaches.
The second objection is fear of what the course will reveal. Underneath an adult's interest in a tutor is usually a worry that has not been said out loud, and anything that looks like an assessment will not be started. One unemphatic sentence saying that what you are about to look at is common at this stage, and that noticing it early is ordinary rather than alarming, does more work than any reassurance further down the page.
What your sign-up page has to say
Say it is ten minutes and say what the ten minutes look like. Five evenings, ten minutes each, at the table, with nothing to print is a proposition an exhausted adult can agree to. A five-day course in supporting your child's numeracy is a commitment, and they have enough of those already.
Say what you do not ask for. No name, no school, no date of birth, no photographs, and no open text box about difficulties. Adults are increasingly careful about this and the ones who are not are owed the care anyway. Saying it plainly is also the clearest possible signal about how you will handle a family's information if they hire you.
Say a confirmation email comes first and that the five evenings start after the click. A tutoring list is seasonal and is mailed hardest in the fortnight before term, which is the worst possible moment to discover that a batch of addresses written down at a school fair were written down wrong.
The lines a tutoring sign-up page has to carry:
- Ten minutes an evening for five evenings, with nothing to print and nothing to buy.
- That the emails are for the adult, and that the learner is not being set anything.
- That no name, school, age or photograph of the learner is asked for at any point.
- That a confirmation email arrives first and the evenings begin once its link is clicked.
- The age range or stage the five days are written for, so the wrong reader stops here.
- That nothing in the course is an assessment and nothing produces a score.
- What day six is: one named slot at a stated rate, or a place on a waiting list.
What the day-six email asks for
Offer a named slot at a stated rate. Availability is what a tutor actually sells: there are five usable hours between the end of school and bedtime and you have as many of them as you have. Thursdays at five, from the week after next, at a stated rate, is a decision an adult can make in one evening. An invitation to get in touch and discuss needs is not.
When you are full, say so and offer the waiting list properly, with a realistic date. A tutor who is honestly booked until January is more attractive than one available immediately, and a reader who was told the truth in September is the reader still there in January. The alternative, which is a vague reply to a keen parent, loses them to somebody with a calendar link.
The second ask, for everybody who is not ready, is a reply: the one thing their learner got stuck on this week. It is answerable in three sentences, it is genuinely useful, and it tells you what to write next. It also means the course does not end in silence for the large majority who were never going to book in September.
A worked five-day outline
| Day | What the adult does | Why that day is there |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Asks one question at dinner and listens to the method rather than the answer, writing nothing down | Ten minutes inside a conversation that was happening anyway, and nothing about it can be failed |
| Day 2 | Learns the three methods they are likely to have heard, and what each says about the understanding | This is the diagnosis, and it is the part a tutor knows that a textbook and a worksheet cannot supply |
| Day 3 | Plays one ten-minute game that exercises the method that turned out to be missing | Turns the observation into something to do, at the table, with nothing printed and nothing bought |
| Day 4 | Reads the mistake: correcting the answer, or stepping in a moment before the child gets there | Recognisable to every parent in the country. This is the email that gets read out at the school gate |
| Day 5 | Asks Monday's question again and notices what changed in the method rather than in the answer | Ends with evidence the adult gathered, framed as information rather than as a score |
| Day 6 | Is offered one named weekly slot at a stated rate, or a waiting list with an honest date on it | Availability is the product. A specific hour is a decision; an offer to discuss needs is not |
Common questions
Who is a tutoring email course actually written for?
The adult on the list, almost always. The learner is often a child who signed up for nothing and whose details should not be in your system at all. Write to the adult, make each day something that can happen at the table, and collect no name, school, age or photograph.
What should a tutor teach in five emails?
How to hear which method the learner is using and what it says about where the understanding stops. A parent does not need to be taught the subject. They need the diagnosis, which is the thing a tutor knows that a worksheet cannot supply, and it stays useful for years.
How do you stop a tutoring course feeling like homework?
Ten minutes, at the table, with nothing to print and nothing to buy, said on the form and repeated at the top of every email. Keep the tasks conversational, and never set anything that can produce a result an adult will read as bad news about their child.
What should the last email of a tutoring course offer?
A named slot at a stated rate, because availability is what a tutor sells and a specific hour is a decision an adult can make in one evening. If you are full, say so with a realistic date, and ask everybody else to reply with the one thing their learner got stuck on.
Other kinds of work
The five-day shape is the same everywhere. What changes is what the days teach, what the reader is suspicious of, and what the last email asks for.
- Email courses for coaches and consultants
What a five-day email course should teach when you sell your own hours: the diagnosis rather than the method, and a day-six ask a reader can decline.
- Email courses for freelancers
Five days that leave a prospective client holding a brief they could take to anybody, and a day-six email that asks for the brief instead of a call.
- Email courses for agencies and studios
Your reader cannot buy, so write for the internal conversation: five mornings that end in a memo, and a day six that asks for the budget holder.
- Email courses for newsletter writers
A five-day course as the front door to a newsletter: what to teach a new reader in their first week, and why the sixth email is just the first ordinary issue.
- Email courses for people who sell online courses
A free five-day course that is a complete small module rather than a trailer, and a day-six email that names the price instead of hinting at it.
- Email courses for authors and novelists
For non-fiction, teach a chapter properly. For fiction, stop calling it a course and give five days of the world instead. Both end in a review, not a sale.
- Email courses for SaaS onboarding
A five-day onboarding course teaches the idea your product is built on, not where its buttons are, and supplements triggered mail rather than replacing it.
- Email courses for developers teaching something technical
Your reader will run what you send: pin the versions, keep the lines short enough to survive wrapping, link a repository, and ask day six for the failures.
- Email courses for photographers
Teaching seeing rather than showing work, in a medium that blocks images by default: what a photographer can teach in words, and what day six should ask for.
- Email courses for ecommerce brands
An alternative to the ten per cent welcome popup: five days on fit, use and care, ending in one order in the variant the reader worked out for themselves.
- Email courses for estate and real estate agents
A course for owners who are a year from selling: no phone number, no valuation, no visit, and a day-six ask that is sized to how far off the reader is.
- Email courses for fitness and nutrition coaches
Five days teaching one measurable habit, with no weight target, no before-and-after and no meal plan, ending in a priced assessment that can refer out.
- Email courses for membership and community owners
You cannot demonstrate a room full of people in five emails, so publish the norms and the numbers instead, and ask day six for attendance at one dated call.
- Email courses for therapists and wellbeing practitioners
Writing a five-day course when some readers are in distress: one well-established self-help skill, no urgency, a route to real help in every email.
- Email courses for nonprofits and charities
The induction most supporters never get: four days on how the problem actually works, one on what changes it, and a sixth email that asks for one costed thing.
The longer writing about email courses as a format is in the guides , the rest of this set is on the index , and what this site itself does is on the home page.
Elsewhere on this site
The rest of this site comes at the same subject from other directions: guides on the format itself, a tool for one job each, a page for each kind of work, and what to check when choosing software.
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