President Barack Obama will deliver a speech about education to students tomorrow. Broadcasting live from noon onwards, Obama’s plan to speak to the students has already stirred up quite a controversy among both schools and parents. Some are calling it a valuable classroom lesson while others fear that the president may be using this as an opportunity for propaganda.

In order to quell this tide of controversy, the White House has announced it will release the transcript of the Obama school speech text on its website (http://www.whitehouse.gov) today to allow teachers and parents a chance to review it.  The hope is to allow them time to decide for themselves if it is suitable for their classes or children to listen to the Education Speech.

There are tons of benefits for both teachers and students in tutoring arrangements.  As a teacher, you can keep sharp on your teaching techniques, try out new ones, and stay up-to-date in your subject area.  You might have found that after summer break, you feel a little rusty in the classroom – summer tutoring can be a great way to stay current and avoid this.

Helping a student who finds a particular topic elusive can be an emotionally rewarding experience in itself; and tutoring also provides the opportunity to earn extra money to put towards your well-deserved vacation or further education costs.  Cash-flow can be a problem during the summer months for teachers, so tutoring is a great way to ensure you can keep paying the bills – and you’ll gain valuable experience while doing it.

Tutoring provides you with the flexibility to determine your own schedule, the amount of hours you wish to work, and where you work.  If you love to travel and are adventurous, teaching English as a second language in a foreign country can be a unique experience.  Or, stay at home and work with local kids to contribute to your community and prepare them for the upcoming fall semester (and enjoy the short commute!).  Working with parents as clients can also be a satisfying experience as you get to know more about the community and the kids you teach during the normal school year.  Many students who receive tutoring in addition to regular class time during the school year build lasting relationships with their teachers and often credit them as having a hand in their future successes.

Working over the summer as a tutor has the added benefit of allowing you to deviate from your typical subject area:  maybe you teach English during the normal school year, but you have a hidden passion for math that you miss utilizing.  Tutoring at a basic level can give you the chance to exercise some of those neglected muscles.  Teachers are also in demand for adults and children for whom English is a second language. This chance to experience variety and make an important difference in someone’s life can be greatly appealing.

To re-cap, teachers who tutor enjoy the following perks:

• Increased cash-flow/compensation for lost pay during summer months;
• Rewarding relationship with students and parents;
• Opportunity to set your own hours, work from home, work locally or even travel abroad;
• Chance to try new things; keep your skills focused, and work in areas you might otherwise not have the chance to during the school year.

Visit Tutor Match to build a tutor profile and register to be linked with a student who needs your expertise this summer.

So what is Environmental Education Week?

The goal of Environmental Education Week is to increase the number of environmental education hours that K-12th grade students receive in both formal and non-formal educational settings.  In 2008, over 1,850 schools and non-formal educational institutions across the country organized Environmental Education Week events.  Collectively these organizations served millions of students with environmentally-themed lessons and activities that positively impacted the environment and encouraged environmental stewardship among young people.

TutorMatch is proud to be a sponsor and partner of EE Week.  Why not help us out?  There’s a number of ways you can take action during EE Week:

Join with NEEF, EPA and other teens to do your part for climate change and children’s health.

Do you know a teacher who stands out among the rest? Someone who takes their passion for the environment and brings it into the classroom, inspiring students to learn and engage in environmental issues? Consider nominating the outstanding teacher for a Richard C. Bartlett Award. 

Be part of the nation’s largest single day for improving and enhancing the public lands we enjoy through our National Public Lands Day home page.

Finding a tutor is the first step.

The first place to start looking for tutoring assistance is in the educational system. Teachers and professors will often moonlight for a little extra pay and give a student the extra help he or she needs. College towns usually have no shortage of tutoring skills available. Tutors can be found in the student body of the college or university by contacting the institution’s office of student affairs or hanging a note with your phone number in places student gather to eat and study.

Checking for online tutoring services will produce good results. Tutorial services connect the student with a tutor who will work with him or her as needed. The results will be improved grades, an increased comprehension level and a better all-around attitude toward the learning process.

Another place to look for tutoring assistance is the local social services agency. Referrals to excellent tutors may be available since the need is a common one. An excellent tutor can sometimes be found this way.

A potential tutor should never be hired without at least a minimal checking of references.  It certainly would also be worthwhile to check with a site like Family Watchdog,  which contains a database of known offenders.  And just to be sure, always be present or nearby when a tutor meets with your children.

Repetition is especially useful when tutoring as children may not have been given the chance to repeat the information that was learned within the classroom setting. When the child is tutored using repetition they are given the chance to use the information learned in the classroom setting and combine it with the practice that they have been exposed to during the tutoring session.

In the past few years learning by repetition has been associated with forming the connection of synapses in brain cells.  This assists in not only learning the information, but in recalling that information throughout the lifetime of the child. Once this information has been committed to memory with the use of repetition, this information may be more easily recalled in the future.

Many skills that are learned through childhood homework assignments are skills that are going to be called upon for further learning. The pyramid of learning that is created can be based upon the repetition of the skills that children learn in their formative and early years.

Repetition is not the end all be all of learning. The learner begins with a limited amount of information (be it words or concepts), and adds in concepts as the process goes along. Gradually, the child will need less and less repetition as he or she learns the concepts which are built upon in the future.

Repetitive teaching techniques can be extremely useful with homeschool tutoring.

1. Provide a quiet place for the child to study and review the concepts that have been learned that day. This could be a time after dinner when the table is clear or any another designated study area within the home or the bedroom.

2. Keep track of assignments. The more you are involved in the child’s school schedule, the more the child is going to consult about it with you. Remember when assignments are due, when assignments need to be started and when any tests or quizzes occur within the classroom.

3. Help children with basic skills including math skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. These basic skills are required for any further math concepts to become developed throughout their academic career.

4. Use everyday situations to help your child learn math, English and scientific principals. This will ensure the child will realise the importance of the lessons that are being taught while reinforcing the information that has been covered in the classroom setting. Repetition ensures that the child will retain the information.

5. Use worksheets, computer software and educational games to further develop and practice the concepts that have been taught within the school. Using the skills learned on a daily basis will help to solidify the lesson within the child’s brain.

And finally, don’t be afraid to seek professional tutoring help if you’re in over your head or if your child is simply struggling too much.  Tutor Match has thousands of Math tutors, English tutors, and Science tutors available either in your neighborhood or offering tutoring services online.

The first thing to test is your child’s ability to do standard multiplication and not the ladder method. This is fine with small numbers, but once they get to 3 digits and decimals, it becomes nothing but a pain and often a source of errors.  I usually had 2-3 students in each class using the ladder method.  I worked with them during extra help or before school, retraining their multiplication and wouldn’t you believe … they found it much easier to do the traditional vertical multiplication method!  What you can do at home is each night give your child a few problems to do using traditional method. They will be confused at first and might forget, but after a few days they should catch on.  Don’t overwhelm them with a ton of problems; 2-3 each night is fine.

The next thing I suggest is to review their long division skills.  Some students came to 6th grade only knowing how to do “partial sums” which again is fine with small whole numbers, but once you get into decimal division, it doesn’t work as well and creates confusion.  So first, review long division (or teach it depending on the case) and then review decimal division.  Most 5th grade math curriculum covers both long and decimal division so it should not be a foreign concept to a 6th grader.  Each night, give your child 2-3 decimal or long division problems.  Don’t overwhelm or overload.

Parents, if you don’t feel confident about making up your own problems, contact the teacher and ask if he or she can send your child home with a worksheet or if they can recommend a website with problems and examples.  Two very good websites with worksheets are edHelper.com (which is a paid subscription) and Math.com which is free.  And teachers, send your students home with worksheets to do at their own pace.  It may seem like a lot at the beginning of the year, but retraining math skills only makes learning new ones easier.

About our Guest Blogger and Author:
Mrs. Hilary M. is a Math Tutor and Teacher from Princeton, NJ who offers her professional math tutoring services on TutorMatch.com.  She also blogs at Mrs. Mo’s New Jersey, Baby! and HCM Tutoring.