When should I try to find tutor for my child?

Often parents notice a child’s academic performance decline and begin to think of hiring a tutor. I like to encourage parents to first thoroughly assess their child’s overall situation, searching for issues that might affect his or her emotional health or ability to focus. Primary issues to inquire about include physical and emotional issues.

Physical Issues

• Sleep: Many studies underscore the high sleep needs for teens, but unfortunately we interact with many students that are over-committed and borrow time for homework from sleep time. Research indicates that neuro-transmitter depletion is replenished between the sixth and eighth hours of sleep, so if a child is consistently getting less than six hours of sleep, his or her brain is physically depleted and not capable of functioning at its ideal capacity.

Food: Proper nutrition is of the utmost importance for proper brain functioning. As well, maintaining family meal times has been associated with high student performance and personal thriving.

Exercise: Studies show that aerobic exercise has definite beneficial effect on the brain. Students have often endured the maximum sitting time that their body can handle just from attending school. Ensuring regular physical activity is an important component of helping a student maintain their scholastic performance.

Schedule: Especially here along the Peninsula, students face tremendous pressure to over-schedule. They feel pressure academically from school work, SAT preparation, and college applications. Many also participate in extra-curricular activities such as drama and journalism and high-level sports teams. Parents can render a great service to their students by consistently encouraging a student to allow a healthy amount of leeway time in their schedule.

Emotional Issues

• Peer Issues: a child might be feeling unaccepted or rejected by his or her peers. These feelings powerfully affect learning capability.

• Teacher Issues: some children are particularly sensitive to the instructor of a course and seem incapable of enjoying a course – whatever the subject matter – if their relationship with the teacher is strained in some way.

• Parental Support: inquiring into whether a child has a sense of full support from his or her parents can be key.

• Recent Emotional Event: perhaps a child might be less attentive to their schoolwork due to an upheaval unrelated to school such as a falling out with a close and trusted friend, a change in their romantic relationship status, a move to another school or home, or change in family structure (divorce, remarriage, or other custody change).

Where should I look for help?

Once any issues have been investigated, and a student is clearly at a new level of academic challenge, I encourage parents to maximize any accessible help from the school:

• Teacher Office Hours
• Peer Tutoring
• Free After School Tutoring Programs

Sometimes, as well, parent aid can be very effective provided a positive atmosphere can be maintained. Once these resources have been exhausted, professional tutoring can be considered.

• Group Tutoring at centers
• Private tutoring

What are the pros and cons of the various types of tutoring?

Private Tutoring

Private tutoring available from members of the Mid-Peninsula Tutoring Network ranges $80-$200 per hour for elementary school tutoring and advocacy, and $100 to $275 per hour for secondary (middle and high school) school tutoring.

A high-quality tutor will seek to understand a child’s unique learning personality and to present material in such a way as to optimize a child’s learning experience and address his or her long term learning issues. One-on-one tutoring has the potential to be calming and therapeutic rather than impersonal and anxiety provoking.

Private tutoring is not just a remediation model, but can serve to enhance the learning experience, providing enrichment beyond the classroom experience and deepening the child’s individual learning process. Private tutoring can maximize time-efficiency for students with burdensome time constraints; eg. heavy involvement with a sport, musical performing group, school play, or school newspaper. A high-quality tutor can also supply long-term support and mentoring to a child displaying loss of confidence or in need of reliable adult attention and care. In our practice, we will work with students for up to seven years and often work with all of the siblings in a family, developing a long relationship of support and service.

The obvious drawback is the greater cost relative to group or online tutoring, however, the benefits to the student are usually greater.

Many private tutors we know are tutoring exclusively online since the pandemic.

Group Tutoring at centers

Many tutoring programs are available in varying price ranges. Some examples include Kumon and Ivy Tutor Center.

A skilled teacher can accommodate a group of students and keep them moving forward on their individual work.

The main drawback would be waiting time while other students are asking their questions, the noisy environment, and anxiety issues students face in speaking up in front of a group. Non-assertive children might be little better off than in the classroom.

What types of private tutors are available?

Homework Tutors: Private homework tutors assist students with homework, often helping with long-range planning for term papers or projects, study skills and organizational needs (systematic note-taking, filing, pre-reading skills). While a homework tutor might not have expert knowledge of all of the subject matter, he or she will probably have a good working knowledge of subjects up to the Middle School level. They often charge less per hour, but require a commitment of several sessions per week.

Subject Tutors: Subject tutors assist high school students with information transfer, working with each individual child’s learning style to enhance the learning experience. Some specialize in Learning Differences.

Educational Therapists: These tutors have a degree in Educational Therapy and can administrate academic and learning difference assessments. Sometimes Ed Therapists will advocate for a child at school.

Learning Advocate: Learning advocates will come to an IEP at school to represent student interests and needs. Their job is to become familiar with test results, learning differences, and family requests and provide professional support for assertively helping schools to fulfill these requests.

What is the best time of year to search for a tutor?

In my experience, the best tutors will usually be full by the time school begins, so waiting until the fall report-card period ends can be problematic. Our fall schedule is often full by the time school let out the previous spring, with each time slot filled by a returning student. The best time to look is when seniors start dropping off the schedule, which can be anywhere from March to May. Getting on a wait list is a great idea, and summer work can often move you up the ladder.

How do I go about looking for a tutor?

The most significant source for finding any high-quality adult to work with your child, whether for music lessons or tutoring is your trusted community. Ask friends who are satisfied with their childrens’ tutors who they work with. Call those tutors, and if they are full, ask them for a referral.

Next best is to call the Academic Dean or Guidance Counselor at the school and ask them for the name of a tutor from whom they have seen good results.

Unfortunately, looking for tutors on google or other internet portals often leads parents to large, corporate tutor providers or centers. These groups tend to use young college graduates and have rapid turnover. High-quality tutors tend to work for themselves or for small groups of successful tutors.

To sign up for sessions with Gaskin Tutoring Services email us at info@gaskintutor.com.