About Alexplains

Alexplains started the way most good tutoring does — in person, one student at a time, usually because a parent asked whether we could help with a class that had stopped making sense.

Those sessions worked, and word travelled. Families who had moved, or who could not make the drive, asked whether we could teach online too. So we added it — and learned something worth being straight about: online is harder to teach well, particularly with younger students. A nine-year-old needs someone beside them, watching the hand that is writing, catching the hesitation before it becomes a wrong answer. That is difficult through a screen.

It gets easier as students get older. By middle school most can hold a thread of reasoning across a shared screen, and by high school online is genuinely as good — often better, because a screen can show a graph moving in a way a whiteboard cannot, and because a session can happen on a Tuesday night without anyone driving anywhere.

So we teach both ways and we will tell you which one we think suits your student. If your fourth-grader would do better sitting at a table with someone, we would rather say that than sell you the more convenient option.

We are now growing the instructor team. The reason is simple: one person can only cover so many subjects, so many time slots, and so many places. More instructors means a student in a different city, or one who needs Thursday evenings, or one taking a course outside any single tutor's range, can still get help from someone who genuinely knows the material.

What we are careful not to lose while doing that is the part families actually value. Every session is one-on-one. Instructors prepare for the specific class a student is taking rather than teaching from a script. And the tone stays friendly — students learn far more from someone they are not embarrassed to be confused in front of.

We would rather grow slowly and stay good at that than grow quickly and become a call centre with a whiteboard.

Teaching with us

If you know your subject well and like explaining it, we would like to hear from you. We are especially interested in instructors who can cover advanced math and physics, and in anyone who can teach in person outside the areas we already reach. Tell us what you teach.