What to Do About Bad Grades

courtesy of Leland Francisco 

It’s that time of the year again when some families have to deal with the reality of bad grades. Poor academic performance can put strain on your family. Your student may experience a drop in self-esteem and confidence which will only compound the problem. We believe that every student can learn, but each student learns differently. You have to find the learning style that suits your student’s ability and then provide them with the tools they need to succeed in academics.

Start at the beginning

Speak with your child and their teachers to ascertain the root of the problem. Perhaps social or behavioral issues are influencing academics, or perhaps your child is missing some important building blocks in their knowledge.

Teachers have full classes and very little time, so they assume that students have the foundations from previous grades that they will add onto. If your child has some gaps in their knowledge base, they will fall further behind each year.

Study Skills

Each child has a learning style and, while most teachers try to present information in a number of different ways, they may not be speaking the academic language your child understands. There are many tests available online which will help you to find out what kind of a learner your child is. Then you can help them to convert information into a format that is easy for them to understand.

Some students need to learn organizational and study skills. While most teachers do impart these skills in the lower grades, if your child doesn’t know how to organize their time, how to study effectively, how to write a good essay or how to summarize texts, their marks will not be a true reflection of their abilities.

Language skills

If your child does not excel in language arts, they may be underperforming on all their test. The ability to read and comprehend texts in a timely manner and then communicate effectively through writing are essential skills for students to succeed. Encouraging reading and working on writing skills may improve your child’s overall academic performance.

Consider a tutor

Tutors are a great way to get your child the help they need. Tutors can test your child to see what their learning style is. They can go back and find what building blocks are missing in your child’s knowledge and help them to understand the fundamentals.

 

Tutors should liaise with teachers to find the best solutions for your student. Working one-on-one with a tutor will avoid all the embarrassment or anxiety they feel in a classroom environment and their self-confidence will improve too.

Tutors can teach students the study and organizational skills they need to be great independent learners.

 

The summer vacation presents a unique opportunity to give your child a jump start on the new academic year. Summer tutoring need not take up much of their time, but it will help them to catch up and build confidence to face a new academic year without the anxiety that they usually associate with academics.

 

7 Great Summer Reads for High School Students

From relevant to hilarious, this reading list contains a wealth of interesting books for high school students.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

This book, written in 1932, looks at Huxley’s vision of the future. Thanks to psychological engineering, people have been genetically bred to be passive and therefore useful to the ruling class. This book presents not only a wonderful world of imaginative genius, it also sheds a poignant light on the present. This is considered to be Huxley’s masterpiece and a great read for the curious mind.

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

Dr. Wilbur Larch is the director at St. Cloud’s orphanage in Maine. When his protégé, Homer Wells, takes the reins from the physician, the harsh realities of life in the 1920s and 30s takes its toll on the young doctor. This is a very touching novel and a story about love and loss that examines the grander themes of life.

Swords for Hire, Two of the Most Unlikely Heroes you’ll ever Meet by Will Allen

16 year old Sam Hatcher and his friend, en eccentric royal guard, aren’t exactly what you would call conventional heroes. But when the king is captured by his evil brother and imprisoned in a dungeon, they are the only ones who can rescue him.

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

When she is just sixteen, Mattie Gokey has to take a job at the Glenmore Hotel where a guest, Grace Brown, asks her to burn a stack of secret letters. But when Grace’s body is pulled from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters hold the clues that could reveal who committed the murder.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Government agencies are genetically engineering a race of child geniuses in order to develop ways to protect the earth from invasion by a hostile alien race. Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggin is one of these children who is taken from his parents and drafted into military training at a very young age. Beset with sibling rivalry, isolation and pressure from adult teachers, Ender must overcome his fears to help save the world.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Arthur Dent is having a very bad day. When he wakes up to discover that his house is about to be demolished to make way for a new highway he thinks his world is coming to an end. He couldn’t be more right as his friend, Ford Prefect explains that Earth is about to be blown to smithereens by a battle cruiser. Ford manages to hitch a ride moments before earth is destroyed and he and Arthur begin an epic hitchhiking adventure to the end of the universe.

The Exploding Toilet by David Holt and Bill Mooney

This interesting book explores the best modern day urban legends. These juicy tales aren’t only scintillating, they also teach an important lesson on how to think critically about the stories people tell. A great book for the reluctant reader.

Tutor Doctor on Bloomberg News

Watch the video here

Tutor Doctor’s Vice President of International Franchise Development, Rogelio Martinez was invited to Bloomberg News' headquarters in Manhattan to interview with Pimm Fox from “Talking Stock”. Fox takes a look at what Tutor Doctor franchises offer their clients and why the company is enjoying so much success.
Bloomberg Television is a 24-hour financial news television network and is one of the most influential business and finance news channels in the world. From its studio in Manhattan it broadcasts via satellite or cable TV to 5 continents and has about 7 million viewers each month.
“Taking Stock” is a program of business interviews and financial news analysis broadcast daily on Bloomberg Radio & Bloomberg Television. Presenter Pimm Fox works with guest representatives and financial experts to conduct in-depth discussions of industry and market trends. Fox has interviewed numerous business chiefs and investment gurus including Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett.
Tutor Doctor has over 15,000 tutors in 15 countries and they are affiliated with the National Tutor Association. These tutors are managed by 220 franchisees who control 400 territories. Franchisees are generally people who want to own their own businesses and don’t need a background in education; only a desire to make a difference.
In this interview, Martinez explains about the outstanding growth of Tutor Doctor worldwide, competitive advantages, tutor training, franchisee backgrounds and more. Fox also makes reference of a recent study projecting the global private tutoring sector to surpass $102.8 billion by 2018.
The interview starts by exploring Tutor Doctor’s unique, personalized, in-home tutoring service. Since very few students will actually work at the pace of the class, some will fall behind and others will get bored as the pace is too slow. In both cases, poor grades may cause anxiety and damage self-esteem. Tutor Doctor helps students to achieve their academic goals in the comfort of their homes and works at the pace set by the student’s abilities.
Tutor Doctor is unique in that it provides tutoring for school-age children, adults and seniors. In fact, people of all ages can rely on Tutor Doctor to help them achieve academic success.
Tutors are caring and compassionate and all go through rigorous training provided by Tutor Doctor. They have to pass an online interview and a personal interview as well as a background check which means that Tutor Doctor provides families with tutors who are caring and qualified. The training helps each tutor to recognize your student’s learning style so that they can present information in the best way.
Start with a free consultation by an educational consultant to determine the exact needs of the student as well as the aspirations of the family. Tutors then work with the student, teacher and parents on a plan that will cover short-, medium- and long-term goals. Parents receive regular updates on student’s progress.

Tutors Make a Profound Difference in Student’s Lives

A Johns Hopkins study of Baltimore Public Schools found that students who don’t read over the summer “lose more than two months in reading achievement”. Most students lose “two months of grade-level equivalency” in math skills every summer. That’s about 30% of the progress they made over the previous the year.

A 1996 analysis of 39 studies on summer learning loss found that all students scored lower on standardized tests at the end of summer when compared to their performance on the same test at the beginning of the summer.

These studies also showed that summer learning loss is accumulative which means that students who didn’t participate in educational activities over their vacation got further and further behind each year.

If your children struggled to get good grades last semester, your school is switching to the Common Core Standard or you want to give them a jump start for the new academic year, the Tutor Doctor Summer Success Program can turn the summer months into an opportunity to excel. We come to you, wherever you are, at a time that is convenient to you. In the comfort of your home, we provide individualized training and give your child the caring and confidence that they need to succeed.

Summer Success Program

There’s no need to interrupt your travel plans or family obligations; just one or two sessions a week is all it takes to catch up or get ahead. This summer, you can get the best of both worlds by ensuring that your children have fun and get smarter too.

Your goals are our goals: we have a comprehensive, collaborative approach to learning and work together with your family and teachers to identify the right learning strategies and find the perfect tutors.

Our Tutors

For our Summer Success Program, tutors focus on having fun. We also understand that the most essential ingredient to in-home tutoring success is that your student is matched to the right tutor. Making the magical match between tutor and student is a process we take very seriously. In fact, our tutor match guarantee means we keep trying until you are completely satisfied.

Your education consultant and tutor have your student’s best interests at heart. We listen, understand, and build a personalized summer learning plan to help your student become an academic champion for life. That’s why third party research proves that over 95% of our customers would recommend us to others.

Summer Learning … Comfortably!

Over their long vacation, most students experience a phenomenon known as the summer slide where they lose much of the academic gains they made over the last semester. Summer academic losses are also cumulative so students who experience the summer slide will drop further behind every year.

The problem

According to the authors of a report from the National Summer Learning Association: "A conservative estimate of lost instructional time is approximately two months or roughly 22 percent of the school year." While academic losses happen across the board, most of the studies which focus on the summer slide deal with reading and math abilities which are so important for today’s students who want to compete in an increasingly tough job market.

Better learning means a better life

The antidote to the summer slide is to take just a couple of sessions every week for in-home tutoring. Here your kids get personalized education that suits their personalities, abilities and learning style. Watch their confidence grow as they not only avoid the summer slide but fill in the gaps in their learning, and acquire the study skills they need to succeed in the new year.

At Tutor Doctor, we don’t want students to be dependent on our tutoring, so we teach the skill set they need to work independently and remove the academic anxiety that many families deal with on a daily basis.

Our programs:

·     Convenient, comfortable, one-to-one

We come to you, wherever you are, at a time that is convenient to you. In the comfort of your home, we provide individualized training and give your child the caring and confidence that they need to succeed.

·     Everyone can learn with the right approach

We have a comprehensive, collaborative approach to learning and work together with your family and teachers to identify the right learning strategies and find the perfect tutors.

·     Better learning, better life

Your education consultant and tutor have your student’s best interests at heart. We listen, understand, and build an educational support team and personalized coaching plan to help your student become an academic champion for life.

·     Your goals are our goals

Whether your student’s needs are immediate – like passing the next exam—or long term, we build a tailor-made plan that gets results. We start with an in-depth assessment, then match the right tutor to your student to help your family improve the present and make the future possible.

Our tutors

At Tutor Doctor, we provide your children with affordable, professional academic coaching in the comfort of your own home. Our tutors undergo a rigorous selection process so we know that they are qualified, well-matched and passionate about really supporting families and helping your students to succeed. With a dedicated coach and a supportive academic team, every student can succeed.

With our Summer Success Program, your children can really get a head start on the coming semester so that they can bring their A-game. Our one-on-one tutoring style delivers results. In fact, 95% of our customers would recommend us to their friends and family. 

Tutors Make a Profound Difference in Student's Lives

A Johns Hopkins study of Baltimore Public Schools found that students who don't read over the summer "lose more than two months in reading achievement". Most students lose "two months of grade-level equivalency" in math skills every summer. That's about 30% of the progress they made over the previous year.
A 1996 analysis of 39 studies on summer learning loss found that all students scored lower on standardized tests at the end of summer when compared to their performance on the same test at the beginning of the summer.
These studies also showed that summer learning loss is accumulative which means that students who didn't participate in educational activities over their vacation got further and further behind each year.
If your children struggled to get good grades last semester, your school is switching to the Common Core Standard or you want to give them a jump start for the new academic year, the Tutor Doctor Summer Success Program can turn the summer months into an opportunity to excel. We come to you, wherever you are, at a time that is convenient to you. In the comfort of your home, we provide individualized training and give your child the caring and confidence that they need to succeed.

Summer Success Program
There's no need to interrupt your travel plans or family obligations; just one or two sessions a week is all it takes to catch up or get ahead. This summer, you can get the best of both worlds by ensuring that your children have fun and get smarter too.
Your goals are our goals: we have a comprehensive, collaborative approach to learning and work together with your family and teachers to identify the right learning strategies and find the perfect tutors.

Our Tutors
No matter what time of year it is, we understand that the most essential ingredient to in-home tutoring success is that your student is matched to the right tutor. Making the right match between tutor and student is a process we take very seriously. We listen, understand, and build a personalized summer learning plan to help your student excel.

Contact us to learn more about our summer programs!
tutordoctorli.com

Overcoming Test Anxiety

pic by Collegedegrees 360

Many students suffer from anxiety when they have to prepare for and write tests and exams. Some get nervous because they are ill-prepared, while others get bogged down in stress regardless of how well-prepared they may be. When students are anxious, they are unhappy and their stress can negatively impact their ability to prepare for a test and their performance on the day. You can help your students to overcome their exam anxiety for a happier, healthier learning experience.

Symptoms of test anxiety

Anxiety may be accompanied by physical symptoms like head and stomach aches, nausea, fatigue, sleeplessness, loss of appetite and vomiting. There can emotional symptoms too like irritability, anger and fear. When students have to operate under this kind of duress for extended periods, they lose focus.

Anxiety can inhibit their ability to concentrate and affect their memory. Higher cognitive functioning also suffers, making it harder for them to solve problems and comprehend complex data. Anxiety also impacts their ability to sleep and reduces appetite. Not getting enough rest or healthy nutrition affects memory and overall academic performance.

Stress busters

Start from the very beginning by setting realistic academic goals for your students. Help them to get organized by scheduling sufficient study time to prepare adequately for upcoming exams. Don’t do all the organization for them, rather teach them how to record all their upcoming papers and tests and how to organize their time.

Ascertain whether their anxiety stems from a genuine feeling of being overwhelmed. Are they struggling with a subject? If they just aren’t coping, help them to catch up and keep up by getting them an in-home tutor. One-on-one tutors can discover the missing building blocks in your student’s knowledge and skill set and can remedy this so that your student has a solid academic foundation to build on.

Tutors are also able to teach study skills and time management while showing your student how to organize information in a way that suits their learning style. They can help them to build confidence and provide the skills your student needs to work independently.

Happy thoughts

A positive attitude and confidence are two of the most vital arrows in your student’s academic quiver. If they have an inner dialogue that says they are dumb, just can’t do it or that they are bad at math or science, then that has to change.

Help them to recognize these negative thought patterns and to catch themselves when they fall into bad attitude traps. When they have a negative thought, they need to stop, take a deep breath and replace it with a positive one. You can help by focusing on positive reinforcement when they are on the right track.

Sweet dreams and healthy meals

Getting enough sleep is essential to a stellar academic performance. Ensure that your student doesn’t stay up too late studying, limit sugar intake and make sure they get enough sleep.

While most students like to live on sugar and junk food while they hit the books, opt for healthy, nutritious meals. The brain only takes up 2% of your body mass, but it uses 20% of the energy. So give your rocket the right fuel to function.

For More Information

Family Education Network: www.familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,66-2127,00.html

The American Institute of Stress: www.stress.org