Personal
tutors or ‘Learning Coaches’ will soon be recognized as
indispensable “mentors” who will be counted on to help students
overcome difficulties and challenges faced while they are engaged in
their secondary and post-secondary studies. Tutors will be able to
help students graduate on time and will also be extremely useful in
situations where students are taking correspondence courses while
also attending school on a full-time basis. It is much easier to
handle distance education if you have the services of a personal
tutor at your side. In addition, as people enroll in private career
colleges in order to upgrade or qualify for a career shift, personal
tutors will help ensure success in the program. Tutors will become
insurance for students in the future.
COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGES BEING RECOGNIZED
Tutoring has been
widely accepted as a necessary part of education by other countries
such as India, China, Japan and the United States. It is quickly
being accepted in Canada, and in particular Ontario, as more and
more parents and grandparents see the competitive advantages of
hiring a tutor for their children.
While there are
many forms of tutoring, personal tutoring in the student's home has
always been preferred among most parents, but the general feeling
among parents is that this service was simply too expensive for most
people to consider.
Recent
developments in education and the increasing popularity of private
franchised "Learning Centres" are now causing more and
more parents to consider "tutoring" for their children. As
a result of this phenomenal growth, personal in-home tutoring has
actually now become a more economical alternative than many other of
the options available to parents.
POSITIVE
STATUS SYMBOL
Tutoring is
beginning to develop a new image in Canada as a positive
"status symbol". In the past, having a tutor meant that
you were experiencing problems in school and were not as
"smart" as the rest of the class. Today, many of the top
students in school are seeking help from a tutor, otherwise known as
a Professional Learning Coach, in order to nudge their marks higher
to compete with limited university and college spaces in their
chosen programs. It is now becoming "cool" to have your
own tutor acting as your learning coach and giving you the advantage
you need to get ahead.
SELECTING A TUTORING STYLE FOR YOU OR YOUR CHILD
One of the biggest challenges facing
students today is that their personal learning style may
not be in sync with the teaching styles being employed
in educational institutions in which they are enrolled.
Further aggravating the situation is that the learning
style of parents may not be the same as the learning
style of their children, thus causing additional
frustration and a complete lack of understanding as to
why your child is not able to be successful in school.
Therefore, when selecting a "tutoring
style" for your child, you must take into
consideration his particular learning style. Identifying
the learning style that is predominant with your child
may be difficult because each person uses many different
styles of learning depending on the situation.
Nevertheless, as you consider what is best for your
child you should take a few moments to read the
following and at least be aware of some of the things
that may influence the success of any tutoring program
you end up selecting.
DETERMINING YOUR LEARNING STYLE
One of the simplest ways of determining your likely
learning style is to ask yourself what comes to mind
when you hear the word "dog".
If you see a picture of a dog in your mind's eye or
if you see the letters of the word, you are probably a
"visual learner".
If you hear the bark of a dog, you are probably an
auditory learner.
If you feel the fur of a dog, you are probably a
kinesthetic learner.
PROCESSING OF INFORMATION
Our learning style is the way we respond to
environmental, social, emotional and physical stimuli to
understand and process new information that is presented
to us. We all use each of the three learning styles from
time to time, but each of us tends to have one style
that is more prevalent.
When it comes to helping your children, it is
important that you not only have a clear understanding
of your own dominant learning style, but that you also
know the prevalent learning style of your child. As a
parent, you have been observing your child from birth,
so you should have some idea of the most effective
learning style your child prefers.
Secondary and post-secondary school students are able
to determine their own learning styles as they proceed
through the school system. Their learning style may in
fact be a deciding factor in the type of career that
they choose for themselves.
VISUAL LEARNERS
To oversimplify the matter, visual learners learn by
watching. When presented with new ideas they recall
images they have from the past and try to relate these
previous images to the new concepts. They actually form
a picture in their head about the ways things look. It
is estimated that about 40% of students fall into this
category.
For example, in order for a visual learner to develop
new vocabulary, he would have to both hear the word and
see the work in written form at the same time. When you
read stories to a child who is a visual learner, you
should allow the child to follow the story as you read
it out loud so that he/she sees the words that you are
reading. This way he/she will have a better chance of
remembering the new vocabulary. Just reading to the
child orally is fine, but in order for him to identify
the sound of the words it is better for him to
"see" what is being "read".
That is why I strongly urge parents to introduce
their children to as many different experiences as
possible when they are young. Take them everywhere, even
if you feel they may be "too young" to
remember. A young child may not be able to remember an
experience when he is older, but that experience will
impact his learning for years after the experience. This
works both in positive and negative ways. For example,
an infant who has a traumatic experience at the hospital
may be too young to remember what happened, but as an
adult she may have great anxiety about going to doctors
or hospitals. This is because her brain remembers the
stimuli and acts defensively whenever reminded about the
trauma.
Therefore, when dealing with a child in elementary
school, it is important to know the kinds of experiences
that the child is likely to have had in the past. The
more the child has experienced, the easier it will be
for the child to "recall images" from the
past. A tutor who comes to your home has the advantage
of being able to witness the environmental stimuli in
the house and understand the distractions that are
present while the child is working at home. This also
allows the tutor to use items that exist in the child's
life to reinforce concepts. Tutors in your home also
have a chance to talk to the parent who can provide some
insight into particular difficulties and challenges.
Slowly a tutor comes to understand why the barriers are
present and can work at overcoming those barriers.
On the other hand, if you take your child to a
tutoring centre there may not be many visual stimuli
that are familiar to your child. There may be nice
pictures on the walls and it may be aesthetically
pleasant to the adult eye, but it may not mean anything
to your child. If the parent and child are separated
from the tutoring area then it means that there is no
possibility of connecting to the parent to get a better
understanding of the situation.
AUDITORY LEARNERS
Auditory learners tend to spell words phonetically
but they have trouble reading because they do not
visualize well. These students learn by listening and
they remember facts when they are presented in some
entertaining form. Auditory learners like being
"read to" but do not like to follow along.
They also learn a lot from watching television. Auditory
learners love using email because they can get away with
spelling phonetically. They are also very developed in
terms of oral presentation skills, but have trouble
writing and reading.
Young children are not usually very good auditory
learners, but unfortunately, they are often surrounded
by auditory stimuli from a young age. They hear language
and words and watch a lot of television and videos, but
they often are not given a chance to match their
auditory stimuli to visual stimuli.
It is also my professional opinion that in order to
be a good auditory learner, you must have first of all
been a good visual and/or kinesthetic learner and then
decided that you preferred the auditory style to others.
You must be able to "visualize" in your head
what you are hearing, so if you have not had the past
experiences you simply cannot relate to what is being
said. Once again, this demonstrates the benefit of
giving your child a wide variety of experiences from a
young age so that they have something to relate to while
they absorb knowledge in an auditory fashion.
I have encountered many students who were excellent
auditory learners and loved to express themselves
orally. Some find that writing and reading are simply
too slow for their brain. They can't read fast enough or
write fast enough to keep up with their thoughts. As
these students make their way into secondary and
post-secondary school situations they find that success
comes much easier because more of their learning is
auditory and they are recognized for their presentation
skills. These are the students who can sit for hours
listening to lectures and walk away with the
knowledge.
If your child is an auditory learner, then it may be
best to find a tutor who will be able to come into your
home to work one-on-one. This gives the tutor a chance
to "talk" with your child in order to make
sure that your child understands the concepts being
taken in school. Moreover, it allows the tutor to help
your child develop strategies that will help him/her
adapt to the need to "read" and
"write" in order to satisfy the requirements
of the classroom teacher. A tutor can show the auditory
learner how to speed up his reading and how to write
faster or "slow down the brain" so that his
hand can keep up with his thoughts. These are skills
that must be developed because children in elementary
school especially must "produce" written work
to demonstrate what is going on in their mind.
Tutoring centers present challenges for auditory
learners. These centers are often just like "small
classrooms" with several children all working on
their own worksheets or being given instruction. It is
often a place where talking is kept to a minimum because
it could be distracting to other students. This means
that an auditory learner is forced to rely on reading
and writing, two skills that he finds challenging and
often "boring".
KINESTHETIC LEARNERS
Kinesthetic learners are what we call "hands-on
learners". They like to learn through manipulation
and are very successful in the arts, mechanics and the
trades. It is estimated that up to 50% of all students
fall into this category and have trouble learning in a
traditional school setting.
Young children are kinesthetic learners, as any
parent will know. During the elementary grades children
are brought further away from kinesthetic learning and
more into the auditory style. For some, this transition
is difficult and creates problems. Often children who
are kinesthetic learners begin to fall behind at around
Grade 2, 3 and 4. Up until Grade 2 or 3 a child
"learns to read". After Grade 3 a child
"reads to learn". Therefore, if there has been
any delay in the development of reading skills children
will experience a great deal of frustration at this
stage of their education. This is a time, extending into
the junior grades, when negative attitudes towards
learning develop and some children simply "block
out" learning.
Kinesthetic learners respond well to one-on-one
tutoring. This tutoring is even more effective if it is
done in the home of the child allowing the tutor to use
concrete materials that are around the home to reinforce
concepts. Schools and tutoring centers often have
commercially produced instructional aids that look nice,
but when developing the concept of addition, nothing
takes the place of placing six packages of Kraft Dinner
on the table and showing that you can get the same
number of boxes by dividing them up in groups of 3 and
3; 2 and 4; 1 and 5; or 0 and 6. Subtraction is also
easy when you take away two of the packages for
dinner.
IMPLICATIONS FOR STUDENTS & PARENTS
Studies have shown that almost 80% of instructional
delivery in secondary and post-secondary settings is
auditory in nature, however only 10% of all students are
auditory learners. The instructional delivery in
elementary school is more visual and kinesthetic,
especially at the primary grade levels, but as one works
up to the intermediate level, namely Grade 7 and 8, more
of the instruction becomes auditory in nature.
This means that in order for a child to find success
in school it is often necessary to show him/her how to
strengthen his auditory skills or how to review the
original information in a different manner at home in
order to understand. It means that you may benefit from
the services of a personal tutor who is more able to
incorporate a more suitable teaching style in order to
reinforce concepts taught in class. For example, a tutor
working your child's home is able to use visual and
kinesthetic methods to reinforce information that was
presented in a largely auditory manner. Once the
stimulus is incorporated into the mind of the student,
the next time he hears it in class it will trigger the
right kind of connection.
Parents must also be in tune with the possibility
that their children learn best in an environment that is
different from the traditional setting. For example,
while a parent may require a quiet learning space, a
child may learn best in a more chaotic environment. If
your child is having trouble learning then experiment
with different environmental settings and teaching
styles. It may produce wonderful results. I must say
that I have come across students who work much better at
the kitchen table instead of in the privacy of their
bedroom. It is not for us as adults to try to
understand, but rather to create the most efficient
learning environment possible for our children.
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