Improved Confidence and Motivation: Motivation and confidence are inextricably linked. No one wants to spend time doing the things they find impossibly hard – that’s torture. However, once a student believes that they are capable of completing their work at a high level, they naturally feel more motivated to take it on and cross it off the list. Our tutors help students build that confidence, one win at a time. 

A Deeper Understanding of the Material: A tutor brings your child beyond a surface level understanding to the heart of the material. Instead of simply regurgitating definitions or formulas, or cranking out a paper that meets the minimum requirements, your child will begin to see the deeper significance of the curriculum. That creates a totally different experience, one in which your child makes meaningful contributions to class discussions, turns in work of a higher caliber, and feels more engaged and excited about the class.

Personalized Instruction: “I pay attention in class, but I still don’t get it!” Teachers present the material in the way they think will make sense to the greatest number of students, but that inevitably leaves some people out. And there usually isn’t time in class for teachers to explain concepts again, in a different way. Students must then struggle to piece together an understanding by consulting their textbooks, class notes, classmates, or Google. This circuitous path causes frustration, as precious time is spent, often without much to show for it. Our tutors are focused on understanding how your child learns best: the explanations that truly resonate and the ones to avoid. Tutors can then give your child access to the material in a way no one else has, which alleviates stress and encourages confidence.

Because You Can’t Help Your Child: Let’s face it, even math, which you might remember, is not taught the same way that we learned it. So even if you had the time and the inclination, you probably can’t help your child with their homework. And jumping in to try usually only frustrates your child and cuts into whatever precious downtime you might have had after work. This is not a recipe for success.

The Gift of Time: Your child will accomplish a great deal more in tutoring than on their own. They go from confused to clear with amazing speed, and on to the next topic. In fact, it’s not unusual for students to clear up a week’s worth of material in a single hour or ninety minutes with their tutor. That’s important because there is no shortage of other activities competing for a student’s time: sleep, sports, meals, friends, chores, hobbies, etc. Time is among our most precious resources, so providing a tutor so that your child to get through their work more quickly creates numerous benefits of great advantage. 

We Accommodate Your Schedule: Even when teachers want to meet with students outside of class to provide extra support, they cannot always free up at the time the student is available. That often means it’s impossible for the student to get the extra support they need, or the student might force their other commitments into undesirable time slots to be able to see their teacher, often with unintended results. With us, though, you can schedule the time that is most convenient for you. That can be the difference between a stressful day where you’re running from one commitment to another and a day where you have a moment to catch your breath and prepare for the extra support. Also, by meeting your tutor on Zoom, you don’t need to go anywhere, which again saves you time. Most people feel overcommitted as is, and finding the time for extra support shouldn’t, in itself, be another stressor.

We want to hit the ground running with students so that they are confident in our ability to help them and never feel like their time is being wasted. That means we complete whatever preparation or planning is necessary ahead of the appointment (and never bill for that time). Some tutors might claim that they don’t need to prepare for an appointment because they are such experts of the material, but that would simply indicate their lack of experience. Whatever the subject, it’s always possible to find a lesser discussed topic, something really obscure, that a tutor would need to remind themselves of. We believe that should be done on our time. Also, by getting the material in advance, we begin to think of the different possible ways to break concepts down. Then, after considering several explanations, it’s easier to shift from one to another when necessary.

Preparing for appointments is not a common practice among tutoring businesses, but we place a premium on the rapport between students and their tutors. We want students to trust that whatever their problem or confusion, their tutor will clear things up in short order. That just isn’t possible if the student has to wait while their tutor hurriedly skims a textbook or Googles a forgotten formula. 

The most important reason is that only an expert can explain the very hardest questions in a way that your child will understand. We guarantee that we can work with the brightest students in the most advanced classes and that none of their questions will be too difficult for us.

The other main reason, which is also very important, is that our tutors bring their passion for their subject to the appointment, and it’s contagious. By spending time with someone who has devoted a great deal of time to the subject and achieved a deep understanding, students gain insight into why the material is relevant, powerful, cool, worth studying, etc. It’s this personal connection that makes the material come to life, and unless students can find a reason to respect the material they’re studying, they will never really embrace it. 

The minimum time for an appointment is one hour, but they can be scheduled for any length beyond that. If you’re unsure how long you need, we recommend that you start with an hour and see how it goes. Appointments are so full of meaningful discourse that sometimes an hour is all a student can handle before needing a break. Also, your child will probably accomplish a lot more than they expect in the hour, so they really might not need anything more.

When students don’t need a break after an hour, then longer appointments can be a lot more productive, especially for more advanced classes that deal with more complicated concepts. Students have told me that in one two hour session they are able to accomplish more than double the work they would have done in a one hour block, and that’s because they are taking the time to get deeper into the subject matter. Also, simply knowing that they have more time can make it easier to relax and concentrate more freely.

You must also consider how many classes you are trying to support and how frequently you’re meeting. For a single class of average difficulty, 60 or 90 minutes per week is usually enough, as long as the student is merely keeping up with the current material, and not catching up. If your child is catching up, they might need quite a bit of time each week, depending on their present situation.

We would be happy to advise you in regards to your particular situation, so feel free to schedule a call or shoot us an email.

None. We have made this as flexible as possible for families. That means that whether you want a consistent appointment at the same time each week or simply call whenever you need some extra support, you get the same first class treatment. We are not trying to upsell you on bundles of hours or convince you that there is a single best approach. On the contrary, the whole benefit of working with a private tutor is the ability to find the specific solution that is best for your child in your unique circumstances. We really enjoy thinking things through and coming up with custom solutions.

Absolutely. We stand by our work, and that means that if you have a tutoring session that you do not think is helpful – because the tutor is unable to explain the material in a way that makes sense to your child – then we will not bill you for it. I have been in business since 2005, and that has never happened, but we still have the policy in place.

We have a 24 hour cancellation policy, meaning that if you cancel within 24 hours of your scheduled start time, then you have to pay for the session as if it had taken place (100%). We hate to bill for time not used, but our schedules would be completely unmanageable without this policy.

We select only the very best people to work with your children and are very invested in our relationships with our tutors. Hiring them as employees does add to our expenses, which is why most tutoring companies hire people as independent contractors, but as an employer we are able to specify how they do their job. In other words, we can only train our tutors and ask them to adhere to the policies and practices that we have found to be essential to students’ success because they are employees. Independent contractors are free to do their jobs however they deem fit. We insist on certain procedures and protocols, so we never considered going the independent contractor route.

If you are considering other companies, you might ask this question, though. Companies who simply refer independent contractors cannot possibly control the quality of the tutors’ work. That might be okay in some industries, but not when it comes to working with your child; at least, not in our opinion.

Before I get to the goals that your child can take on, let me pass on some ideas about laying the right foundation for the changes ahead.

1. Talk to your child about why they’re struggling. Because most children will struggle to explain this to you, you should expect to lead the conversation. Note: Be careful not to appear like you’re blaming him (comments like “Why didn’t you come to me for help? Why didn’t you ask your teacher? Don’t you understand that you need good grades to get into college?” can make teenagers feel attacked and cause them to become defensive). If you want them to be open so that you can help think through different scenarios and choices, you cannot turn around and throw their mistakes in their face, or they will shut you out. To be successful in this endeavor, you need to establish trust, meaning they must trust that they can tell you about their mistakes and that you will not criticize or judge them. This is especially important in the very beginning, though you must adhere to this principle always. They already knows you don’t approve; they don’t approve either. You have to own that and let go of the idea that if you put their face in the mistake that you will be able to manipulate or coerce him to do the right thing going forward. That’s just not true. The only way that your child can make real change is if they want to make a good choice, for their own reasons, and they’re willing to take a hard look at the choices that have been made up to now. It will never happen because he wants either to avoid a scolding/punishment or to please you. Any changes that come about for those reasons will inevitably be short-lived, in spite of how much they might want them to last.

I must also point out that in some families, this type of conversation just isn’t possible. There is so much arguing about school or blame about other things, disappointments, etc., that having a calm discussion about a potentially explosive topic just isn’t going to work. If so, I would suggest that you consider enlisting the help of a counselor or psychologist. Your child needs to be able to talk to someone to make an honest assessment of what they’ve done so that they can acknowledge their role and get some perspective. It can be extremely difficult for people to navigate these conversations without the help of a neutral party, so if you are not having any success, consider trying a different approach. Enlist the support of a professional who can help provide the tools you both need.

Listed below are examples of goals that students can realistically set for themselves if they’re ready to make some changes. Remember, in order to experience lasting change, your child will need to change the way they think about things, and that is a gradual process. If they “decide” that they are going to do everything right from now on, they will almost certainly fail and then resent the process of trying to improve. Instead, it’s better to start with bite-sized pieces that they can chew — and only as many of them as they are comfortable with. Often the excitement of “I’m going to get it right this time!!” is intoxicating and leads to goals that essentially amount to fantasy. On the other hand, if your child expects the process to be a little unpleasant and prepares for that, they’re probably on the right track.

Lists are great tools, but sometimes people get carried away – thinking that everything they put on paper will magically get done. For instance, a student might start blocking out “times to study” on a blank calendar, scheduling 8 hours per day, 6 days a week. Yet if he had not been devoting any time to school before, then that schedule would be completely unrealistic.

Because it can be hard to know where to start, I offer some challenges of varying difficulty so that your child can find at least a few to get started with. And as they start tasting success, they can choose to add a few more – when ready! Sustaining efforts on a regular basis is key — so encourage them to choose the right goals and not overpromise. Let them know you’re proud of their efforts.

Goals that your child should consider:

1. 1. Set up regular meetings with your teacher (or a different teacher who teaches the same subject) outside of class for extra support — either before school, during lunch or a free period, or after school. Bring in specific questions or concepts that you want to discuss further.
   2. Write to a counselor/learning specialist at the school for support with note taking and/or creating study materials. The school might have someone available for free who can help you to understand how your notes or study materials could be more effective. This will save you time and make your study time a lot more focused.
   3. Find one or two people in the class who are doing well and willing to study with you before tests. If you are feeling shy about asking for help, think of something you might be able to offer them in exchange, such as homemade chocolate chip cookies. (Most teenagers have a sweet tooth.)
   4. Take out your class notes and evaluate the following them in terms of the following characteristics:
      1. Legibility – if you can barely read them, they probably won’t be useful or instill confidence.
      2. Clarity of idea (do you know why you wrote something down?)
      3. Connection to bigger themes or ideas within the class (often a teacher will mention how the book or idea that is being discussed connects to the same ideas that other books presented, for instance).
      4. Usefulness – Since taking the notes, have you gone back to read them? Have they been helpful, or did you just write stuff down so it looked like you were busy in class (or because everyone else did)? If you are NOT using them, this is the best reason to improve their quality. It is impossible to remember everything from class, so if you start to write down less, but the things you write down are useful and remind you of the ideas that came up during class discussion, that’s a big step in the right direction.
   5. Read the textbook and take notes on what it covers before those topics are brought up in class so you can follow the discussion more easily and completely. Obviously, you should be reading the textbook at some point, and ideally, you will take notes as you read. By deciding to do this before material is presented, you will have a much better chance of asking a good question or simply understanding what your teacher is discussing. Also, your notes from class will be much better as a result.
   6. Commit to going through your binder and backpack every day to:
   7. throw out useless papers and garbage.
   8. sort everything else so that you can find materials easily.

Note: If you have been very disorganized, you will need to decide what you would like your system of organization to be. Most students like to personalize their system, but whatever they choose, they will need to sort their materials into the following categories: relevant now, relevant later in the semester (for a final or bigger test), and not relevant anymore. I recommend that the big binder (or the smaller ones, if you prefer working with multiple) that goes to school every day contain only the stuff that is relevant now. Everything else that you need to keep for later can be transferred to binders that stay at home and carefully stored for when you need it.

vii. Commit to improving your understanding of how long assignments will take to do carefully and completely. Many students have no idea of how the night will actually turn out, such as how long assignments will take or whether they will have time left for something fun before bed. They tend to start without a plan and hope they finish everything before bedtime. So how could this be better?

viii. Commit to writing down all your assignments before leaving school, and designate a place for them, like a planner or the calendar on your phone. Try to make it a ritual, where you can see that you are actively making yourself better organized. Even if your assignments are available online, you want to make sure you know what your evening will look like before you leave school so that you can also make sure that you have all the materials (books, handouts, calculators, supplies for dioramas, etc.) before you get home.

ix. Email your teacher directly for feedback on where you could improve. Letting a teacher know that you are making a concerted effort to improve your performance and your grade is always a smart move. Not only do teachers often have suggestions that you might not have considered, but they will be more likely to reach out and help you when possible.

x. Commit to never leaving a completed assignment at home. You could designate a folder in your binder for completed assignments so that whenever you finish one, you will put it there so it is definitely with you in school the next day.

xi. In order to budget your time, and decide the sequence that you will take on your various assignments, you need to start improving your understanding of how long things take. Imagine trying to make a financial budget without knowing how much things cost… it wouldn’t work. You have to make choices based on the amount of time you have and how long things actually take. But that information is only available through improved self-awareness. No one else can tell you how long you need. Follow these steps:

1. 1. 1. When you look at your assignments, write down your estimated time to complete.
      2. Start a timer when you begin working on something.
      3. When you finish, stop the timer and record the actual time to complete.

You will find that some things go much faster than you thought while others take longer. That is extremely useful information to have. Also, it will motivate you to be more efficient while you’re working — to see how quickly you can get things done without sacrificing the quality of your work.

These goals are not set out in any particular order. Again, I would suggest that you start with the ones that resonate the most with you – the ones that seem to be the most beneficial – and build from there over time. Do not try to do too much at once or you will burn yourself out.

And please feel free to reach out to me personally to discuss any of these suggestions. I am always happy to share my experiences.

Remember, your goal throughout the tutoring process is to become more independent so you need the tutor less and less. You should be proactive in your organization, study skills, and execution.

• Follow the suggestions in number “9. What are some options for free self-help?” as much as you can.
• Complete your schoolwork as soon as the opportunity presents itself. That could be in the 25 minutes before dinner is ready, while you are waiting for the bus, or some other time that might not seem like the typical time to get stuff done. Always keep an eye out for such opportunities.
• Take the time to track areas where you have questions and need support so that you are prepared to ask for it when your tutor arrives.
•  Devote time to preparing for your tutoring session before it begins.
  1.  Getting your workspace ready — assemble your materials and be ready to go before your tutor arrives.
  2.  Prioritize what you need help with and write up specific questions or a list of topics you would like to discuss so no time is wasted when the tutor arrives, and send the list to your tutor ahead of the appointment.
  3. If your tutor needs to assess your academic situation and determine where you need the most help you will miss out on time that could have been spent explaining something to you.
•    Evaluate your progress in these areas. You can be proud when you see your improvement but also acknowledge when you should take additional steps to do better. Be honest with yourself!

Executive function means getting things done: consistently establishing priorities and executing a game plan. Students who struggle with executive function could demonstrate a wide variety of tendencies, from being disorganized and lacking motivation to failing to turn in assignments on time and appearing nonresponsive. This situation can be perplexing to parents, who fail to understand why a student isn’t making the most of their opportunities.

We see a lack of executive function as a state of feeling overwhelmed more than anything. Students have a huge number of things competing for their attention: the unending threads on social media, incoming texts, a ton of schoolwork, sports or other extracurriculars, friendships, family, and on and on. This barrage is unlike the circumstances I faced as a teenager, and I found my own to be challenging enough. As a kid, I would go to the park to play basketball for hours – never talking to anyone else until I got home – and certainly never coming back to find messages waiting for me. Today, that’s nearly impossible. People are checking their phones at an alarming rate – responding to messages or seeing what’s new on their thread – the speed of life seems to only accelerate. When are they supposed to calmly reflect on things and think about the big picture, or to daydream? It can feel like every minute is being taken from them, without their consent, for an unknown purpose. In that environment, students are frequently stuck putting out one fire after another, just to stay afloat, and they lose sight of the big picture. To change that dynamic, students need to get back on top of things, managing them with good judgment and optimism, and freeing up time in the process. Such a transformation might seem too much to hope for, but we have seen that it’s not, and that’s because all students want to get out of the chaos and feel like their choices matter.

We understand that no lasting change will come from simply telling a student what to do and when to do it…the change must come from within, so we must get to know the student, to understand what they want for themselves and what they see as the biggest obstacles. Then, if they’re open to our support, we can make suggestions. For example, if a student identifies time management as a source of anxiety and frustration, we have a variety of tools and resources we can tailor according to a student’s preferences. 

If asked, we could identify many different things that we think foster executive function, the traits a student can aspire to, but as long as we are telling students what those things are, we deprive them of the opportunity to learn from their own insights. The best reason to acknowledge something is true is that they have already been aware of it for a long time. We provide an environment that is free of judgment and criticism so that students can make these discoveries and admit them. Then, asking for help is a reasonable next step. 

At its core, our approach to helping students improve their executive function rests on the following tenets:

1. All students want to be successful in life, in the ways they find the most meaningful
2. Every student deserves our compassion and respect because their external results do not tell the whole story
3. Every student has the capacity to change, even dramatically, when they are honest with themselves and are willing to ask for help
4. Students who struggle with executive function already know that their results to date are not great
5. Students can assess which of our suggestions will work for them (better than we can)
6. If a student is only making changes because they are forced to do to, the changes will be short lived and potentially a source of negativity