Tutor vs. Academic Coach

You are one step in the right direction when you decide that you are going to find support for your child, to help them at home with their school work. The next step is figuring out what that support is going to look like. Does your child need help understanding curriculum content? Does your child need help completing homework and assignments? Does your child just need a cheerleader in their corner to help build self-confidence and esteem? Understanding your child's needs is really important before you start shopping around so you can make sure you are getting the best support possible. Knowing what's available out there is really important. Based on my 10+ years of experience, I have found that now more than ever, there is such a great need for more than just the traditional type of tutoring. This is especially true for students who have Executive Functioning challenges, Attention Deficit Disorders, Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, and other learning deficits we are seeing through assessment outcomes.  With need comes support, and the inception of our Academic Coaching service. We have come to differentiate Tutoring & Academic Coaching to ensure we are meeting the growing needs of all our clients. They are offered as separate services but often merge quite seamlessly. The feedback has been tremendous and a lot of families are seeing such positive results. Here's the difference between the two. 

Tutoring

• Helps students understand curriculum content in any or all subject areas

• Helps students complete homework

• Helps students study for upcoming tests and exams (having a study buddy can be quite beneficial)

• Helps students when it comes time to edit final assignments

• Helps boost confidence and self esteem when going through homework, assignments and test prep at home. Reassurance always feels so good!

• DOES NOT mean that someone is showing up to your house to complete your child’s homework or assignments for them

• Offers remediation and enrichment to catch up or move ahead in the curriculum

• Helps parents out when time is limited after school to help their child with homework, etc.

• The focus here in on the product

Academic Coaching

• Helps students who need support with organizational management and time management

• Helps students take larger tasks and break them down into smaller ones

• Helps students organize and manage their schedules and agendas

• Helps students set up systems at home for homework and assignment completion and test prep

• Involves communicating with teachers to align goals and learning strategies

• Teaches students study skills that target both their strength and weaknesses

• Primarily focuses on processes and then product

• Provides a solid foundation to allow students to learn effectively

• Boost confidence and self esteem when going through homework, assignments and test prep at home. Reassurance always feels so good!

• Reduces the needs for parents to play the role of 'teacher' at home- which often compromises the parent-child relationship

How to Hire the Right Tutor.

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When hiring a tutor you want to take the time to make sure you are finding the right person for your child. Investing in a tutor can have many beneficial outcomes for your child, given you find someone who is a perfect fit. So, how do you make this happen? How do you find that perfect fit? There are many things to consider when you are shopping around for a tutor. Make sure to have a list of questions or a checklist prepared as you conduct your search. This will help you know if you are on the right track. Here are the 5 most important things to consider when you are in the process of hiring/interviewing tutors.

#1. Before you start interviewing different tutors make sure you have a good grasp on your child’s academic needs. Ask yourself why your child needs a tutor. Does your child have a learning disability and needs extra support? Is it a motivation boost they need? Is your child unorganized and need help staying on top of their work? Study skills support? Homework completion? Behavioural challenges? Narrow it down before you make any calls.

#2. What are the tutor’s qualifications/certifications and teaching experiences? Since you are looking for professional academic support, the tutor should be a registered Teacher with the Ontario College of Teachers (or equivalent). If they are not registered, they should at the very least have Education training and a post-secondary degree in the field of Education. Depending on the needs of your child, you should ask if they have any ‘additional qualifications’ (AQs)- which means specialized training obtained at the University level in specific areas (ie; special education, reading, math, french, etc.). Have they ever tutored or taught kids the same age as yours? Do they have experience with the curriculum content your child is working on at school? Have they worked with kids who have similar needs to yours? Dig in and find out! An added bonus would be if they were qualified and experienced in more than one area and grade level. Once you find that perfect tutor you don’t want to have to give them up when your child moves on to the next grade. 

#3. Where does collaboration fit on the tutor’s agenda? Any good tutor will be more than willing to communicate and collaborate with your child’s classroom teacher(s). This is super important for the sake of consistency between home and school. It’s always beneficial for the child to be using consistent learning strategies across different environments. Tutors and teachers should be communicating to share what strategies work and don’t work. It’s also important for the tutor to understand the teacher’s expectations so the tutoring sessions can be geared in that direction. There should always be a bridge between school and home. Open lines of communication work wonders!

#4. When choosing a tutor, you have to find someone who fits into your family’s lifestyle. If you are busy juggling multiple kids’ schedules, you might benefit from a tutor who will come to you vs. you going to them. A tutor with scheduling flexibility is also beneficial, should you want to add in or move around sessions based on test and assignment dates. Standing appointments are important for consistency, however sometimes a little wiggle room is needed. Weekend availability is a bonus if you are the type of family that is scheduled with extra-curricular activities after school, during the week.

#5. Approach is everything! Ask the tutor how they approach their sessions. Two key words to listen for in this responses are; rapport and motivation.  A good tutor will always focus on building a positive relationship with your child before diving into anything too intense. Your child has to feel comfortable with the tutor in order to be productive throughout their sessions. There also needs to be a feeling of trust that comes from building good rapport. On the same note, understanding motivation is key. All learners perform based on some type of motivation- for some it’s getting a good mark, for other’s it’s task completion, for some it’s a simple external reward that has nothing to do with school (for example; getting an extra special dessert for finishing homework). Understanding motivation is a critical part of learning. It’s super important that your tutor is going to use your child’s strengths to boost their weaknesses. We all need to feel success to stay motivated! 

Finding that perfect tutor might take time, don’t rush the processes. Take the opportunity to speak to more than one tutor so you have an idea of how different tutors operate. When I hirenew tutors to join my team of Learning Specialists at Cori Stern & Associates, I always consider the first impression they make during their interview. Tutors inadvertently act as mentors for their students. So you should get the impression that they are confident, personable, friendly, outgoing, warm, and well spoken. Go with your gut feeling! If you walk away feeling good about it, your child will likely have the same impression.

The Kindergarten --> Grade 1 Transition

In about 5 weeks time, thousands of kids around the city are going to be making the transition from Kindergarten to Grade 1. WHOA! This is a BIG deal! The days of roaming the classroom like a free bird are over. Up there with graduating from High School, this is one of the biggest jumps in a child's academic career. Things are about to get more formal, more structured, and a lot more demanding. For some learners, this transition will be seamless. For others, it might cause a lot of fluttery butterflies in the tummy. Each learner will handle the transition on their own terms. For those extra-special learners, this transition might be extremely challenging because of all the change that is going to take place. We all know what the first-day-of-school jitters feels like.  Been there! Done that! Now magnify that x10 for a child who doesn't fare well with the unknown and needs the predictability to maintain a state of calmness.

What does one do to avoid total transition catastrophe?? How do you settle those butterflies in the tummy for all those extra special learners?? There are various factors to consider when preparing for this transition. As you gear up for the first few weeks of school consider the following 5 factors when you are in prep mode. These factors are not exclusive to the SK--> Grade 1 Transition. They can be considered by any teacher who has students who struggle with transitions.

Best of luck preparing for a seemless transition!

- Cori 

New Environment

Welcome to your Grade 1 classroom! For the most part the Grade 1 classroom is in a different room than Kindergarten was, perhaps a different hallways and even more so a different level/floor of the school. Things can look different in Grade 1. The room is set up differently, the cubbies are in different places, and there's no washroom in the classroom anymore. Boo! If you know you have an extra special learner in your classroom, consider taking pictures of the classroom for the student so the student has access to them at home. Providing a visual of the classroom will help reduce anxiety around entering the new learning environment because you will be exposing them to the classroom before they even step in it. increasing the predictability is the name of the game!

New Routines

Sample visual schedule- good for new routines and transitions

New classroom! New teacher! New routines! This includes but is not limited to; an entrance routine in the morning, an exit routine for recess and home-time, a lunch-time routine, a snack-time routine and a washroom routine (to name a few). These are all things that are taught in the first few weeks of school. This can be information overload for some learners, which can lead to some negative behaviours. Consider creating visual schedules that breaks down each routine into it's component steps. This will give the student the opportunity to learn the routines step-by-step and have something to refer to if they get stuck or confused along the way. Visual schedules are great for keeping students on track when doing a multistep task.

New Transitions

Sample visual timer

With a new classroom comes a new set of rules, guidelines and transitions. Going to back to unpredictable situations- transitions can cause those butterflies to flutter because sometimes there is an unknown at the end of the transition. This can include transitions from recess back to class, activity to activity, classroom to gymnasium, and the list goes on. Students are transitioning all day, every day between different activities, rooms, and people. To help make the daily transitions concrete for your learners, use countdowns so they know when the transitions are coming and use visual schedules so they know what they are transitioning to. Some students will benefit from a visual timer so they exactly how much time they have left with a certain activity.

Change in Structure

The learning environment is about to get a lot more structured and formal. Kindergarten supports a very play based learning environment. Kids are familiar with bins of toys to explore, an open space on the carpet used as a canvas for exploration, and learning centres set up for them to roam to and from. Grade 1 comes along and we are all of sudden sitting at desks for extended periods of time, doing a lot more paper and pencil work, and a lot less moving around the classroom. For some learners this change might feel like going from 0-10 in 30 seconds (especially when coming back to school from summer vacation). This can be a recipe for disaster. When in prep mode, you should be asking yourself how you can incorporate some K-structure into your class at the beginning of the year and slowly up the ante as time goes on. Can you incorporate a fun and cozy book nook for free reading time? Still use activity centres for certain subjects? Allow room for exploration with learning manipulatives?

Developmental Trajectory

At this point we know all kids grow and learn at their own pace. We also know that typically developing kids usually follow a similar trajectory with their growth and development. The same is not true for kids with exceptionalities. Whether they are gifted, have a learning disability, or a developmental disability, they will all present differently. This means you have to play detective from to the get go and figure out where each of your students are in their development. Once you have this under your belt-you will be able to better develop your curriculum and programs to ensure success! A lot of natural maturation takes place over the summer, so just because you know a student from the previous year, doesn't mean they are going to be starting off where they left off. Lastly, there are always those kids that go through physical growth spurts over the summer- be sure to take into consideration that outer and inner development might not happen simultaneously. Kids might come into class the first week of school looking a lot older, however still be very early in their emotional and cognitive development.