Why Not Sylvan?

I'm feeling a bit frustrated that I can't find a student to tutor for the summer.  Thus far, I've only taken moderate measures to find a student, but I've gotten no leads.

While talking with a friend today out at a  play date, she said she had seen that Sylvan was looking for tutors.  I told her I'd worked there before.  Not only does the job not offer the pay or hours I'm looking for at present, but I don't agree with their teaching practices.

This is how it worked when I worked at Sylvan almost ten years ago.

The administrator preforms an assessment (i.e. a standardized test).  Based on the assessment, the work targets specific skills.  The tutor does not see the assessment or choose the activities.  The administrator gives a list of the activities and photocopies of the needed materials wait for the tutor in the student's binder.  While this was a plus for the tutor because it meant no prep work, it also meant the tutor was disconnected from the content.  Additionally, the tutor works with three students at once at one table.  Most of the work is skill and drill.  When I tutored, I worked with grade school students practicing basic phonics; these were not subjects I was qualified to teach.  But, I didn't need to know how to teach it because all I had to do was read what was on the cards.  I was paid minimum wage until I hit a certain number of hours, then I got a small raise.  Meanwhile, Sylvan is charging parents about $50.  They require at least two hours a week, but recommend four.  Sylvan was happy with my performance and wanted me to give them more hours, but I couldn't because I taught full time and worked on a master's.  So, they dropped me from the schedule; they never officially fired me or even collected my key! 

Just now, I looked up the pricing information for Sylvan.  I've looked before and couldn't find it.  The web pages always said to call to find out and that it varied depending on the length of services the child needed to reach the goals.  But, today I found a Sylvan page that gave prices.  Here it is word for word here:

Get started at Sylvan for just $155 for a single program test, $230 for a comprehensive evaluation in Reading, Math, and Writing. The Registration Fee, due at enrollment is $75 (lifetime family fee).

The hourly teaching rate will vary depending on how you pay. You can get a discount by prepaying for your program, and we have a Payment Plan. The hourly rate is $45-50. Students usually come 2-4+ hours per week for fastest growth. 

After reading this, I went to my local Sylvan's page and the one for Portland, and neither one gave this information on pricing.  But, I did see promotions for $100 off or $25 off an assessment.  Obviously, the price must be steep to offer such discounts.

This same individual Sylvan page said that a private tutor is a "band-aid" to your child's problems.  I agree with this to some extent, but only because that is what the parent wants.  Usually, the parent wants the child's score at school to go up.  With the student I tutored a couple months ago, I could have worked more with him and fixed some of the problems he was having, but I was there to make sure he passed the 8th grade.  Getting the assignments completed was the primary goal.  That is more about what the parent wants out of the tutoring than my teaching.  A good teacher / tutor should be able to do a better job of accomplishing the same goals as Sylvan if the parents allow the tutor to do so. 

Also stated on this site was that the Sylvan tutor is always sitting right with your child, which apparently is not the case at some of the other big tutoring centers.  This is true, but the tutor could have two other children to help, so its not one-on-one instruction.  They claim that they don't do skill and drill through worksheets, which is possible it has changed over the years, but I would be surprised.  The page simultaneously claimed that the students aren't teaching themselves, which is true.  The students were not teaching themselves through the worksheets; they were going through lots of practice exercises.  I never felt like I was really helping my students while working at Sylvan.  The materials I had to work with were not engaging them and I had no way of knowing if they were achieving long term success with any of the material we covered.  When a student need more help with a topic, I didn't have the time or resources to cover it.  It was not student centered learning. 

I'd also like to point out that Sylvan makes up to $150 an hour for the work one tutor does with three students, but the tutor is not paid even a tenth of that.  That shows how much Sylvan values the tutor:  They don't.  And with their program, they don't need to.  The tutor could be just about anyone reading off the prescribed materials.

Here is why a private tutor is better.

First of all, a private tutor will be able to tailor all work around your child as a person with unique interests and abilities.   Sylvan's approach was impersonal; any time spent getting to know my student was time off task which I could not use inform my instruction.  But, if I am a private tutor, I can take just about anything I learn about a student and use it to inform my instruction in various ways.  A private tutor has the option of personally making all materials and making all selections for texts.  This ability to choose really allows the child to be engaged and the materials to be tailored to the student.  And even though Sylvan totes that its rewards system promotes self esteem, it is still only focused on what a student can not do.  A private tutor can teach the necessary material utilizing the child's strengths. 

Second, a private tutor probably does not use a standardized test. Instead, a private tutor uses several ways to gather data about your child.  The discussion will start with the parents, but doesn't end there.  The tutor talks with the child, and perhaps most importantly, examines actual student work.  (Student work is the best source to see what a student really knows.  It doesn't mater if a student can preform a skill in isolation on a work sheet if the student can't apply the skill in a real situation).   A private tutor could even form a strong relationship with classroom teachers to get maximum results. As the tutor works with the child, she collects data through multiple venues instead of scores on worksheets and a second standardized test.  Not only can a tutor use any type of assessment, but also can use informal interactions of observing and talking with the student to inform instruction.  Through real interaction, the tutor and student can work until the child truly understands the material. 

Third, a private tutor will be an expert in the subjects.  At Sylvan, I rarely felt like an expert.  Even when I was working within my comfort zone of high school students, I wasn't following my own curriculum.  When I worked with the younger students, I had no training on the material.  But as a private tutor, I am only going to accept jobs that cover what I know.  I decide the pace and curriculum (based on the student needs), and can prep myself accordingly.  At Sylvan, I had no idea what I would be covering or even which students I would be seeing until I arrived. 

There are other small benefits, too, such as more flexible scheduling, the ability to meet in your home, and more direct and meaningful communication for the parent.  These seem small, but can make a world of difference to the ease of the tutoring on the family.

Really, it comes down to this: Who would you rather fix your car or your plumbing?  Someone who is specifically trained and experienced and can diagnose and address the problems directly, or someone who is hired to read a manual and run tests?  If you'd choose the professional for your car or home, why wouldn't you for your child?

Teaching the Semi Colon

The semicolon appears on the common core for grades 9-10.  In the past, I only taught the semicolon once with my one tenth grade class.  It went well.  While the semicolon seems scary, it is actually much easier than the comma.   For my freshmen, I would tell them to avoid the semicolon if they didn't understand it because a semicolon is a punctuation mark you can live without.  I like the idea of teaching the topic with sophomores, who have hopefully mastered complete sentences and commas. 

Previous Skill Set:

• Understanding of a complete sentence, including fragments, run-ons and comma splices.  (Ideally, seeing this in the student's writing). 
• Understanding of comma rules.  (Ideally, seeing this student's writing).
• Know the visual difference between a comma, semicolon, and colon. 
• Know the conjunctions (FANBOYS) to exclude them from other transitional phrases. 

Items to be Taught:

• When items in a list contain comas, use semicolons to break apart the items in the list.  
• Use a semicolon to link two complete sentences (independent clauses).  
• Use a semicolon to fix a run-on sentence (especially a comma splice).  
• Semicolon notes a connection between the two ideas being linked.  
• Use of a conjunctive adverb or transitional phrase can help foster the connection between the two ideas.  

How: (not necessarily all ideas or in this order)

• Start with lecture and notes for the two rules including at least one example for each.  
• Put sentences on overhead and have students volunteer where and why a semicolon would be placed.  
• Give each student or pair a sentence to correct, share using an overhead. 
• Give the class a topic (perhaps based on a class reading), and generate sentences using a semicolon in pairs.  Share with class.  To make sharing easy, have students write on transparencies. 
• Watch a video about semicolon rules.  With a quick YouTube search, I found Power Points, lectures, and funny student videos. 
• Find a semicolon in a text.  Determine why it was used.  
• Take a piece of writing (old or current) and add a semicolon.  
• Take a sentence from a text and add a semicolon.  
• Discuss the purpose of the semicolon, using specific examples.  Discuss the impact on a single sentence and idea, as well as using to vary sentence structures. 
• Do grammar exercises using sentences that either need semicolons or commas.  Just a few at a time.  Require to annotate why placed comma or semicolon where did. 
• Require use of a certain number of semicolons in a finished writing piece.  No more than four required in an analytical essay. 
• Read chapter on semicolons in Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.  
• Have students create a unique presentation of their knowledge of the semicolon, such as a children's book or a wonderful video like this one. 
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Common Exams and Standards

Even though I still have about three more years before I hope to be in the class room again, I can't help but think about teaching at this time of year.  Summer vacation just started for all the surrounding districts and today happens to be a true summer day reminding me of those stuffy, humid days grading finals in my classroom.

Final exams is one of the things on my mind.  I ran into a former colleague at the corner farm stand a couple days ago.  Even though it was about 4pm and they only had a half day, she was just heading home from the last day of school.  She said it took her extra time to clean up her room; I kidded that I was always running late because of my grading.  She then told me that the English department now has common final exams (which technically I knew from a friend) and that they are essay questions.  She sympathized for the department because the last final ended at about noon and grades were due the next morning at 8am!  Now, on its own, one set of essay exams in that time frame is fine, even for a slow grader like me.  But its really six classes of essay exams over four days, with potentially two-thirds of them coming in over 48 hours depending on where a teacher's prep periods fall.

When I heard about the common exam before, I was on the fence about it.  I really liked the idea that students in all classes are getting the same basics and that the exams are holding teachers accountable for getting to that material.  The scores also give the teachers data on if those grade skills are being mastered.  This is good.  But, I don't like anything that jeopardizes my freedom in the classroom.   A little control and structure and accountability is fine, and I think such measures would force me to be a better teacher.  But, I am at a place in my teaching where I do not want to be dictated what to teach, how, and when.  Not only is it stifling for me personally, but I don't agree with it for best learning for the students. 

Hearing that this common exam was now making a huge grading inconvenience (and perhaps crisis), did not warm any to it.  My last year or two of teaching, I swapped the final exam for the final essay to make the final exam grade more meaningful while still allowing me maximum grading time.  This common exam forces me to use set material for the exam while demoting our final cumulative project.  The sheer amount of grading to do over last few days of school makes me uncomfortable about how I would accomplish it with children at home, not to mention how my feeling rushed could affect the quality of my grading.  And, that's not even mentioning if I agree with the importance of the skills featured on the common exam.

In the past, I haven't felt too compelled to worry about curriculum.  I find that I hit everything I am meant to without having to pull out my curriculum every time I plan something.  The essential skills my department focused on over the years were a mixed bag.  Some of them I agreed with completely and worked on diligently over the year.  Others, I taught for the couple weeks leading up to the assessment and nothing more because they were generally isolated and not useful for my students.  For example, I taught mostly freshmen.  A skill I believed in was learning how to cite properly and we worked on it for months, while frivolous skill was memorizing and implementing a set list of supporting techniques. 

Having been out of the classroom since the start of the 2009 school year, I've missed the implantation of the common core.  I only now just researched it, because, seriously, who reads curriculum for fun during the few awake hours while the children are asleep?  I quickly found The Common Care State Standards Initiative, which, to the best I could tell, easily presented exactly the curriculum information I needed.  Reading it quickly (with Natalie loudly singing in the background), I agreed with everything I saw.  While it would need some unpacking and time to break the standards down to make the presented standard the final product at the end of tenth grade, I felt all the presented material, excepting maybe the reading of primary historical documents, were skills I valued in my classroom and naturally taught.  Some of the under reading literature stated very clearly what it is we "do" in English, which is sometimes hard for me to explain.

While I felt the bar might be too high for many students to fully achieve all these standards by the end of the tenth grade, my concern would fall under the next step.  Are these standards the basis for standardized testing?  Is data involving how students meet these standards used to assess a school or teacher?  Is completion of these standards in anyway attached to funding?  Will meeting these goals equate graduation?  These are the tricky areas for me.  As just a curriculum, I thought it was spot on.  But if a student needs to meet all of them fully in order to graduate, then I am not.  Hell, I'm the teacher and I don't even "spell correctly," to just use one simple standard as an example. 

Back to the idea of a common final exam, how would the department pick which of the roughly forty standards to use on a final?  Its fair to say that listening and speaking would be out, but that does not limit the selection by much, especially considering all the subcategories under writing.  While I admire a common assignment that strives to keep the education of all students at each grade level standard, I fear that actually grading the exam in the allotted time frame undermines the pursuit. And not only my time requirements for the scoring, but also the student time requirements for the test.  Unless the exam is made a long term assignment due the day of the final, then there is considerable time pressure on the student to preform, and completing the task quickly is not part of any standard I saw.  And, if you are going to take away the time factor for taking the exam, why not just give the assessment a week early to allow less frenzied grading time?

While talking to my friend, I was bravado.  I told her that I guess guidance would have to delay starting vacation for me to finish my grades because I was not going to stay up all night to finish my grading when the circumstances were not my fault.  I've always felt bad that guidance gets stuck late that last day, but also have resented their pressure to all grades in so quickly.  But that is a school structure problem to think about another day.  Right now, Natalie is demanding I go get her some "fruit milk" in a princess cup like we used "at the park with the tiger." 

Whenever grade an assignment, appropriately mark the quarter rubric.

Continue to use tradition book for ease of looking at class date, missing assignments, and computer data entry.

Make a binder with a quarter rubric for each student. Each assignment should connect to a standard on the quarter rubric. When grade, mark the appropriate descriptions. I'm imagining this like check marks. Probably should color code by date to map progress on a standard. Could place check actually on descriptor words. At the end of the quarter, will be faster, easier, and more accurate to determine quarter score.

This will pivot on strong quarterly planning. Need to have clear goals for each quarter and a well made rubric at the start. If I can do that, then this process should help force me to keep all assignments relevant to our goals. Also, focusing on a fewer skills to keep grading more manageable would mean slowing down. I could really go deeper on vocabulary (both content and reading) or use a true gradual release over weeks instead of days.

For progress, I could photocopy the rubrics. Also at quarter's end I would photocopy, and then save a rubric and send one home. The organized data should make summarizing a students progress (or lack of) easier.

Excited about this idea. It seems to be a tool that would have made teaching much easier. I hope that my new position will allow the necessary freedom to do it, and that I will be hired with enough time to plan. I can envision this work easily with my old curriculum for 9th grade, but wonder how it would look with new material at a new school or grade level.

Encouraging Reading in the Early Teen Years

I currently live in board book land.  I rarely venture to the other side of the children's room at the library to where the novels live, unless its to hold William up to see the big dinosaur statue.  Between my literacy course work and my life experience, I've developed a lot of advice for helping parents introduce children zero to four years to reading.  But, as soon as my kids are out of this stage, what use is that information to me and my profession?  Unless I decide to become a district literacy coach, I'll be putting all that hard earned knowledge away.  (Its similar to my wealth of knowledge on breastfeeding that will be useless until I have a grandchild in twenty something years!)  It makes me a little sad to think of my new areas of expertise becoming personally obsolete.

So, I got to thinking, what do I know about reading in the age span I do teach.  And there is a fair amount to share. 

• Any type of text is reading, so give value to all texts.  A book doesn't have to be a classic novel to "count" as reading.  We read all day long in various fashions.  While it is true that most teachers want to see students reading books because the long term commitment engages different thinking skills, reading comics, manuals, blogs, and magazines are still reading and should not be disregarded.   A teen who reads Sports Illustrated cover to cover or has read every Manga title available at the library should not consider his or herself a non-reader. 

• Don't be fooled by classics. I grumble to myself when I see The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird placed on a "children's" book list.  Even an advanced child reader who can decipher the text will miss much of these books have to offer because of their age appropriate deficiencies in maturity and life experience.  Are children really intellectually ready for the huge topics presented in these classics?  Do you want your ten year old reading a book centered around a rape trail?  Because that is what To Kill a Mockingbird does.  Or, do you trust your ten year old to understand Huck's role as a bias and unreliable narrator?  I wouldn't trust mine, or my fourteen year students.  Just because a story is narrated by a child doesn't mean it should be read by children.  Save the classics for a time when the child can make the most meaning of the full text, which I suggest is much closer to 14 than to 9.  And another word about classics.  Excluding maybe Hemingway and Fitzgerald, most of our cannon is not easy to read on just a surface level.  Have you visited Hawthorne or Dickens recently?  Long, drawn out sentences with confusing structures.  Dated and pretentious vocabulary.  References to historical data unknown to the average "child," and often to adults.  Don't make your child suffer a classic until she has the reading strategies to manage these pitfalls comfortably.  

• Don't expect a book to be a silverbullet because it won an award, or is popular, or is recommended by a librarian.  Even your own favorite texts as a child or teen might not be the right fit for your child.  Help your child figure out who he is as a reader, starting with where he is right now.  If that is Goosebumps, so be it. 

• Let them read "junk" or other annoying texts.  After learning how to decode words in the first years of school, from around third grade on your child works on fluently reading increasingly challenging texts.  How does this occur?  Practice, practice, practice.  For this reason, starting around second or third grade, there are many series.  To adults, these books can be shallow and repetitive, but kids can't get enough.  Let them devour a series.  The practice is just when they need it.  Even older kids in middle school still need this practice; they are just trading Flat Stanley and Junie B Jones for Cirque de Freak or The Clique.  When something works, run with it for as long as you can.  Even if you think its junk, go with it and milk it dry.  You might be shaking your head at another vampire love story or eating disorder drama or survival adventure, but your child loves it and it feeds the need for practice through an inviting text.  When it is time to branch out, use the knowledge of what your child likes to find the next step.  Librarians are wonderful at taking this information and turning it into concrete recommendations. 

• Consider your own reading habits.  What do you like to read?  How do you like to read?  Do you consider it work?  Model and discuss these topics with your child.  Help your child compare and contrast different types of reading.  Teens need to see the huge difference between reading a best seller for fun at the beach and reading a textbook and reading a classic novel to write an essay.  Help your child to see the differences between pleasure reading and various types of academic reading.  Not a big reader?  That's okay, too.  Just don't say, "I hated English, too," and leave it at that.  Explain to your child your struggles or frustrations with reading, especially how you overcame them if you did. 

• Encourage variety in genres.  If a child is engaged in a topic, you can help her try various genres.  Sometimes the pairings are obvious.  Your child loves a particular author, then offer his biography.  A teen can't get enough non-fiction about a topic, then find a novel surrounding the topic.  But don't be afraid to try graphic novels, short stories, poetry, or plays.  (Again, librarians are wonder resources!)

• Help provide books.  Let's admit it, young teens are distracted often resulting academic irresponsibility.  Don't let the lack of a books be the reason your child struggles.  If he can't get his act together to get to the school library, then make some books he'll like accessible at home.  Take him to the library.  Get him the next book in his series.  Have a couple books on his favorite topics mix in with the birthday presents.  Pick up a few used paperbacks at a yard sale.  Swap books with another family.

• Help provide time and space for reading.  You can help your child fit reading time into their day by setting limits to other activities, creating a family reading time, or helping your child schedule a time for reading.  Make sure that there is a time in your home when your child can read.  A time where your child will be undisturbed by siblings or chores.  Consider providing a reading lamp or even a cozy reading chair. 

• Don't enable cheating, but instead teach your child to use all sources available to create meaning.  Go ahead and rent the movie of the assigned book, but help your child use it to understand a challenging text or explore larger themes.  Don't banish SparkNotes or other such sites.  Help your child use these summaries for review or clarification.  Why not sometimes let your child use an audio book, or read aloud to your child?  Teach your child that research and finding help are respectable academic qualities, as long as they do not replace the originally assigned work.