Karen's Tutoring

Summertime Tutoring World

I will say up front that tutoring is my passion. With high stakes testing and teaching becoming the norm, there is increased pressure for everyone to succeed…teachers, students, parents.  And this high stakes testing has been at the crux of education for,  how long now? When was the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) enacted?  2001…almost 10 years ago. And many states had implemented high stakes testing a few years prior to that, knowing what was coming down the pike. Yet, the tests results in my state for the 2008-2009 school year show that at least 30% of the state’s elementary students still could not pass the state tests. So, who is getting left behind?  Those students with even slight learning disabilities, those students who have a different learning modality, those students who don’t have parental support, those students who are at a lower economic level than the norm. I could probably go on, but why? The fact is, there are many of our children being left behind. So teaching, and thus, tutoring, becomes a pressure cooker. Get those kids caught up or else.

Now, that being said, this is why I love tutoring in the summer. Much of that pressure brought on by high stakes testing is, at least temporarily, suspended. During the summer the majority of the parents just want their kids to keep from losing anything they gained during the school year, and maybe get a bit of a bump. It’s a much more relaxed time.  Children are in and out of tutoring due to vacations and camps, so some of the structure I try to maintain through the school year pretty much goes out the window. During this time I try to take advantage of teaching moments, often veering off the lesson to pursue something of interest to the student. (Really, isn’t that what education should be.) With some students, a unit on a book they have been wanting to read may be the summer project. Two of my students have been interested in reading “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, so that is what we are doing. I have another student who has a great deal of difficulty with most academics, but he loves to draw and is pretty darn good at it. So his assignment for the summer is to create a character, give him a story, and make a comic book. What a fun way to fuel writing! This is the type of thing I can’ t do through the school year. But summer?…That’s another world…one that gives both my students and me the chance to cool down and have fun with learning.