Spring season hovers cryptically over many upperclassmen as their remaining undergraduate days wind down and a new stage in life approaches. But two alumni encourage students to work as hard as they can in school and beyond so that they can achieve and learn the most out of what life has to offer. They haven’t just experienced this stage themselves — advice is part of their job. And students can receive their help before crossing the gates to college or even as early as high school.

Alumni Elizabeth and Taso Sotiropoulos help many students through Illini Tutoring, a local organization they founded in Champaign that offers coaching in several topics ranging from high school level to advanced college courses. With six employed tutors and over 100 students tutored every semester, both Elizabeth and Taso said Illini Tutoring is the only local tutoring organization that provides coaching full-time and receives sponsorship from the National Tutoring Association.

The couple founded Illini Tutoring in fall 2010 after graduating from the University, although they said their business did not start as swiftly as it may seem. Taso said he and Elizabeth were engaged, and considered graduate programs following college. However, the programs did not immediately appeal to them because of their work ethic, he said. They wanted to follow their own path after their time at the University, and work from there.

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Jason Ampel, the creator of Learning Liaisons, an online tutoring service in Central Florida.

An A student can benefit from tutoring just as much as a student who is struggling to pass.

That’s the message of Jason Ampel, the man behind Learning Liaisons, an online tutoring service based in Central Florida that utilizes technology and one-on-one instruction to engage students. In an age of standardized testing, exit exams, growing classroom sizes and ever-increasing competition for an edge among students, Ampel, who has 10 years of experience teaching for Orange and Lake counties, said tutoring could be more valuable today than ever.

“As a classroom teacher, what I learned over the years is that sometimes you’re bogged down with standards and accountability,” said Ampel, who received his master’s and doctoral degrees from UCF. “Sometimes you don’t have that time to work one on one with students – all students learn differently and you have kids that get lost and they get frustrated and they’re not motivated.

“[Through tutoring], you’re building confidence in students by giving them the one-on-one support that they might not [be getting].” The idea that that same tutoring can benefit a good student just as much as one who is struggling is something Karen Jones, who has two students working with Learning Liaisons, said she can attest to.

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(Photo credit: Jim Legans, Jr. via flickr)

Imagine sitting in a college humanities class, and every time a fellow student suddenly raises an arm to ask a question, or accidentally drops a heavy book on the floor, you jump, and your concentration is lost for the hour.  Military veterans, especially those who have seen combat situations, face unique challenges when they try to go back to school. KSMU’s Jennifer Davidson has more.

In the basement of the Garnett Library on the Missouri State University-West Plains campus, a math professor is giving a private tutoring lesson to a young veteran. He’s only recently put down his assault rifle in exchange for a pen and textbooks. Most students get their free tutoring in the lab, on a completely different part of campus—but that communal environment doesn’t always work for veterans.

“It can get overcrowded—just too much static going on,” said Mark White, coordinator of the Veterans Incentive Program here. That program helps vets make the transition back into civilian life as students.

To read more click here.

A Simon Fraser University student-tutoring program recently expanded its scope to help more students in the Lower Mainland with literacy skills.

The Friends of Simon program connects university students with immigrant students at 200 elementary schools – and, new for this year, at 65 high schools – in Burnaby, Coquitlam and Surrey. The majority of students are from immigrant families who have recently settled in the Lower Mainland, said coordinator Angela Flumerfelt.

“Immigrant students often come both having to catch up on their literacy skills and their basic academic skills and, at the same time, have to learn English, so it’s a huge challenge for them,” she said. “Sometimes the schools aren’t able to address all of that within the school day.”

More than 80 students from different departments at SFU – about half from the Faculty of Education – spend an average of twice a week with groups of two or three students. Cariboo Hill students in grades 8 and 9 signed up in the fall for the Friends of Simon: Rogers group, sponsored by the Rogers Youth Fund, to get help during after-school hours. Tutors help them with homework and incorporate reading and thinking games that promote English-speaking skills. At Hillside Gardens, a government-subsidized housing complex in Edmonds, tutor Sherry Lin works with elementary school students who need a boost with their English language skills.

The fourth-year human geography major is planning to become a teacher and said the opportunity to gain experience in the community is priceless.

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Crossroads of Learning recently launched an online course in Academic Coaching.  The course is self-paced and accessed directly through the internet, taking an estimated 5-7 weeks.  The cost is $209.00, all materials included.  The curriculum is also available in workbook format, to be used in face-to-face training and professional development programs for peer and professional academic coaches, tutors or advisers.  The Academic Coaching workbooks are available to organizations who organize trainings by approved trainers, either internal staff who have completed the Train-the-Trainer program from Crossroads of Learning or certified Master Tutor Trainers from the National Tutoring Association (NTA).

Sandra Clayton-Emmerson of the Center for Academic Success at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York was one of the first to complete the course.  She stated, “I found the training absolutely outstanding! I was introduced to new concepts that were specific to one-on-one coaching.” When asked about her experience with an online learning program, she added, “everything was seamless in terms of how it all went together. The readings with links to outside readings and websites really worked, the assignments following the readings made perfect sense and I was able to reach my mentor anytime I needed to.”

The course helps learning support and academic coaching personnel support the goal-setting, critical thinking, cultural awareness and emotional intelligence development of students, dealing with the entire learning path of being a student. Academic coaching builds on the fundamental skills of tutoring, which is why the Academic Coaching course has a prerequisite of the successful completion of the Crossroads of Learning Tutoring Foundations Basic (or Comprehensive) training level.  A skilled tutor can help a student become a better learner.  A skilled academic coach can help students identify and verbalize the answers to not just academic questions, but about setting and obtaining goals far into the future.

The course also emphasizes the relationship aspect of coaching.  Assignments and readings explore a variety of coaching approaches and stresses how each coach will be unique in their approach to each student.  Course participants learn to evaluate each student based on their own needs, challenges, perceptions, and goals and then devise either a plan to fit that student.  Two approaches are featured throughout, the more traditional role of the coach taking the lead on decisions and pace (directive) or a more collaborative approach of sharing decisions with the student (facilitative).

This course satisfies the academic requirements for peer or professional certification by the NTA.  Certification requires a bachelor’s degree or that the applicant is currently enrolled with a minimum of 60 hours completed towards a two or four year degree; a minimum of 25 hours practical academic coaching experience; and NTA membership. NTA certified trainers may qualify to train with the Academic Coaching workbook by completing the online course. Please visit www.ntatutor.org for more information on certification.

Interested students and trainers may contact Nalini Lasiewicz, Registrar, Crossroads of Learning at 818.249.9692 x2, www.crossroadsoflearning.com or sent an email to: nalini@crossroadsoflearning.com.

This controversy has been brewing for months. The Crossroads of Learning Journal curated an article on 2/16/13, concerning a hearing in December of 2012 which resulted in the teacher’s union taking a position on school teacher tutoring being appropriate. [ Click here to read previous article.]

The following story was written by Dan Glaun, The Island Now, originally published on 3/14/13

The Great Neck Public School Board banned private tutoring between teachers and students within their buildings at Monday night’s meeting, capping months of debate between advocates concerned about potential conflicts of interest and opponents who said the change would harm students. Trustee and policy committee chair Susan Healy acknowledged in a statement the concerns of parents who use private tutors but argued that the change was necessary to guard against the appearance of favoritism or unfairness.

“The prohibition on tutoring students in one’s own building is directly related to the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Healy said. “We do not do so because there are inappropriate situations. We do it so that those situations cannot occur.”

The policy, which was approved unanimously following the fourth public hearing on the topic since September, expands the district’s tutoring restrictions from teachers and students within the same class to those within the same building. The board and several administrators and teachers who testified in favor of the change said the move was necessary to avoid placing teachers in compromising situations, creating the perception of unfairness and corrupting the teacher-parent relationship with money.

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One thing we know about university writing center administrators, they like to write.  They write well, thoughtfully and often.

Earlier this year a discussion on protesting the trend towards machine scoring of essays drew significant interest among members of the WPA-L Listserv, an international e-mail discussion group intended primarily for professionals in writing program administration at universities, colleges and community colleges.  Their postings quickly moved from the theoretical to a call to action, generating hundreds of posts and perspectives.  Within a few weeks, members of the list collaborated on, and launched, an online petition against machine scoring of high-stake tests.

The “Human Readers” petition and website delivers an urgent appeal to all stakeholders to temper the rush in implementing this still controversial technology.  They urge policy makers to remain committed to the use of human readers in evaluating and critiquing student essays.  They are also asking their own institutions to stop buying or accepting machine scoring of essays until the process is proven to be “valid, equitable, and worth stakeholders’ money.”  (http://humanreaders.org)

Evolving since the early 1960s, education and technology companies have developed software and data base management systems to support the collection of student data, including the delivery and grading of high stake products such as the SAT.  In recent years, and with both public and commercial funding, an economic engine has exploded in the education field, with technology and service providers playing a major role.

Some of the testing platforms have branched out into developing remedial online tools for evaluating and grading student writing.  The tools include automated drilling, feedback on areas that can be measured such as spelling, overuse of terms, grammatical errors.  These programs are scoring guides on steroids, calculating and rating submissions by algorithms and word counting strategies.  They provide instant (if mechanical) feedback, outlining functions and a platform to store instructor (or human) feedback, assignment management and student work portfolios (which the student or instructor may be unaware of having given over copyright protection and privacy rights over to the service provider.)  The systems usually excel in providing robust reporting on whatever can be counted or measured, which many administrators seem to like these day.  Which brings us to a fundamental question, can machines actually “read” an essay?

Reading and scoring essays by machine is under growing scrutiny by instructors and researchers who have made writing, and the teaching of writing, their life’s work.  Author, teacher and education expert Maja Wilson was among those who organized fellow scholars to enter and expand the conversation, urging them to put their human foot down, or in the case of petition signers, their hand to the keyboard, and demand that policy makers ensure validity of the process before barreling over the edge of common sense and practicality.

In a recent interview, Wilson described some potential limits of what she terms “the industrial testing complex,” especially relating to the discipline of writing. She lobbies for the continued freedom of authentic voices among our student writers, and for teachers to continue to provide genuine and effective response to the writing, which she believes requires actually “reading,” as only a human can do.  Wilson believes that human writers need to hear what effects their words have on a human reader’s mind.  Another area of concern is the rush to moving students out of the face-to-face interactive model into a large scale, impersonal learning systems.

The “Human Readers” website hosts the petition and is also full of research and information on the subject. For more information on the campaign and related efforts, visit http://humanreaders.org

The principal at Mission Viejo Elementary in Aurora sent a letter telling parents the program is only for students of color. Parents CBS4 talked with said they were shocked to see, in this day and age, what they consider to be segregation. “I was infuriated. I didn’t understand why they would include or exclude certain groups,” said parent Nicole Cox, who is white.

Cox’s 10-year-old daughter needs tutoring. After receiving the notice, other parents complained to the school’s principal, Andre Pearson. “We have come so far in all of these years to show everybody that everyone is equal, that everyone should be treated equally … this is a form of bullying,” Cox said.

Before Cox could complain to the school, Pearson contacted her directly. His voicemail only seemed to reinforce the segregated tutoring idea. “This is Andre Pearson. It’s focused for and designed for children of color, but certainly, if we have space for other kids who have needs, we can definitely meet those needs,” Pearson told Cox in the voicemail.

To read more click here.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get a tricky homework question answered in the middle of the night or find a tutor who your friends have already used and recommend? Two new companies targeting students — one started by a University student — are working to do just that.

LSA sophomore Ryan Gottfried is helping students find tutors with his new website, TutorScoop. TutorScoop is an academic social networking site that connects students at the University with tutors who are trained in a range of subjects. Gottfried launched the website in beta form on Jan. 17, but developed it for about a year prior to its release.

TutorScoop aims to simplify the process for students to find tutors. There are currently more than 75 tutors and 300 students signed up, and these numbers continue to rise, Gottfried said.
“Thousands of UM students seek out tutors each year, and TutorScoop is here to finally make that process easier,” Gottfried said. The site not only enables tutors to find students online, but it also gives them the ability to build up their businesses and brand themselves. Bookings and payments are both done online.

TutorScoop empowers its student base by allowing customers to review their tutors and give recommendations to their peers. A student who finds a tutor with good reviews and a schedule that suits his or hers can book an appointment instantly. “We are quite literally a service for students, by students,” Gottfried said. Gottfried hopes to expand his program to other colleges in the fall and eventually add a video chat feature. A rewards program is also in the works. The hope is that students who are very active on TutorScoop can also earn benefits from local businesses.

InstaEDU, another paid tutor service founded by Alison Johnston, Dan Johnston and Joey Shurtleff, has a similar mission of helping both high school and college students find a tutor.

To read more click here.

Students from Northridge High school tutor elementary students in reading and academics at Hill Field Elementary in Clearfield on Wednesday. (Brian Wolfer/Special to the Standard-Examiner)

CLEARFIELD — As 8-year-old Lyliahna Enriquez worked on her second-grade classwork Wednesday morning at Hill Field Elementary School, she knew that any questions she had could be answered by 17-year-old Christian Jimenez, who was right by her side. Jimenez is part of Latinos in Action, a class from Northridge High School that visits the elementary school twice a week to tutor the younger students in literacy and math. “It’s a really good program in two ways. It’s a great opportunity for the teens to work with kids, because there is no better way to learn than to teach. Also, it helps our teachers in that it gives them the resources to have one-on-one tutoring for the kids,” said Paul Bryner, principal at Hill Field Elementary.

The LIA program is geared toward helping Latino students graduate from high school and college by providing them with opportunities to excel through service and leadership. It is available at 11 schools in Davis School District — five high schools and six junior highs, according to  www.LatinosInAction.org. Students from these schools tutor at numerous elementary schools throughout the district. LIA students have a 100 percent high school graduation rate and an 85 percent college enrollment rate, according to their website.

For the past three years, students from Northridge have worked with students at Hill Field. While their primary purpose is to provide academic tutoring, many students and teachers praised the mentoring aspect that accompanies the experience. “The tutors are incredible young kids. They are a huge benefit to our school,” said second-grade teacher Natalie Phillips.

To read more click here.