Applerouth’s Tips for Making Remote Work Work

Prior to the pandemic, we at Applerouth worked in retail locations as well as remotely, but like the rest of the world, we found ourselves making a quick change to all remote work and teaching in the middle of March. Fortunately, we have been tutoring online for ten years now and do have a few tricks up our sleeves (like triple checking technology settings to help prevent Zoom bombings and other unplanned surprises)! However, moving to 100% remote work and home life has been adjustment for all of us, so we thought we would share a few Applerouth do’s and don’ts to help make remote work more efficient and fun:

• DO take the time to personally connect with your team and clients. Applerouth regularly uses levity as well as ice breakers at the start of meetings to help keep the team connected. One of the IEC Team’s recent icebreakers was:
• Have you ever impulse bought anything you saw advertised on tv (or the internet) and if so, what was it? Did you actually use it?
  
• DON’T hold back on communication! You may have received a few Applerouth updates in recent weeks as we have worked to help you and your students navigate recent changes. Use a regular communication tool like a newsletter or social media posts to collaborate with colleagues and share information with client families.
• DO rely on trusted sources of information. During the initial weeks of the pandemic, it seemed that our personal and professional inboxes were flooded with news and announcements. To help manage the tide, several of us set up Google Alerts to stay informed on the topics we care about without being overwhelmed with information.
• DON’T hold onto past practices that no longer fit. Sensing a need to respond to families who weren’t comfortable committing to a tutoring package, Applerouth has added hourly pay-as-you-go billing for academic tutoring and reached out to families whose students’ testing plans were interrupted to help them build a plan to stretch prep across a new testing timeline.

In such uncertain times, we can never know what a person may be facing. At the beginning of each call or remote meeting, we strive to acknowledge and validate the mood of the moment. As Michael Thompson discussed in his recent SAIS webinar and Jed breaks down here, teenagers can be grumpy any time and planning for college was already stressful enough! Our unofficial motto has been “spread good ideas, not germs” and so we strive to share information (like which schools have announced test policy changes) and forward looking ideas (like getting started on a plan for test prep)! In that spirit, we invite you to share your suggestions for making the best of these days at ideas@applerouth.com. You just might see your idea in a future edition of Ginger’s Apple Picks blog!