The hallmark of The Learning Consultants is helping students reach their potential.

The program that, perhaps, best captures this philosophy is our Student Mastery Program.

 

 The Student Mastery Program

Brief Overview:

Our website: www.learningconsultantsgroup.com has extensive discussion of our Student Mastery Program (as well as a Free Advice and FAQ section which might add to the descriptions).

A quick summary:

We train students to become top students.  This is different than tutoring because we are building student success on a holistic basis.  For example, our motivation shifting techniques create dynamic change for many of our students that can alter their entire attitude to school.

Best practices are usually the missing component for academic excellence.

Many bright students do not know the best practices for school performance. Just as there are best practices for most every work process, there are methods – best practices – for getting good grades.

Top students know these methods. How? Some have intuitively figured out what works. Some have been taught best practices. Some are just lucky that their natural working processes are also excellent studying methods.

We have developed a set of best practices for each significant area of student life:

1. Motivation

2. Classroom Performance

3. Daily Studying (including Time Management)

4. Tests/Projects

The goal is nothing short of providing long-lasting motivation shifting and grade performance techniques that will remain with students long after we stop working with them.

Program Details:

We have either been asked to run our programs in-house (several private schools, such as The Williams School) or to train teachers/administrators (Madison’s Daniel Hand High School) or to run our program for individual families.

Related to individuals, we bill at our hourly rates which range between $60-85/hr depending on the teacher or we provide a discounted hourly rate structure for our multi-session programs.  Under the hourly framework, we meet as often or as minimally as needed/desired. 

Alternatively, we have created a program that is optimally designed to ensure that not only the student’s motivation is shifted and the best practices imparted but also that accountability, conceptual help, and monitoring is reinforced and applied throughout the semester.

We do so by providing our best practices framework and then moving into the application phase of the program.  

We match students with the best teaching mentor possible.   From there, we have a series of in-person and virtual meetings.   Both the in-person and virtual meetings focus on the actual homework, project completion, and test preparation for the student.  The virtual meetings, half-hour in length, will be explained more fully but, in general, consists of a phone call and/or use of our Internet white board.  (If you are not a techie, trust us your kids will easily figure it out!)

Preparing For SAT-ACT 

 When should your child begin planning for college?  In 9th grade?  10th grade?  Sooner? 

Typically, students begin thinking about college just before they face the PSATs, the preliminary SATs, as 10th graders. 

But one recent study by the makers of the ACT, the main counterpart of the SAT, suggests that planning for college readiness should begin a lot sooner—in the 7th grade.

According to this study, the foundations of academic success are laid early on—by the 7th and 8th grades.  A middle school student’s overall academic performance, including standardized test scores and grades, can predict readiness not only for high school but college as well:  “The level of academic achievement that students attain by eighth grade has a larger impact on their college and career readiness by the time they graduate from high school than anything that happens academically in high school.” 

This conclusion is sobering and yet not unsurprising.   

Despite all the different intervention programs in our public school system, the majority of students in middle school still perform at a basic level—somewhere between below basic and proficient.  In other words, they lack the skills and the knowledge to succeed in high school.  

The students in this “forgotten middle,” as the study terms them, begin high school behind the eight ball; and they continue to fall behind in grades and academic performance during the next four years. 

So what’s the good news? 

One positive outcome of the ACT study is that it alerts us to the importance of these transitional years.  Students should not be coasting in the two years between elementary and high school.  This is the time to build and strengthen the academic foundations upon which the rest of their secondary and college education depends so heavily.  

It’s important to point out that the ACT study did not say that high school efforts made no difference, but that the payback is much greater in middle school.  Effecting academic change in the 8th grade is much easier than in high school because this is a critical period in a student’s academic life.  After the 8th grade, students have to work much harder to make the same gains towards college readiness. 

One unsurprising conclusion of the ACT study is that many of the students in this “forgotten middle” lack academic discipline, or, what we call student mastery. 

Many of these students simply don’t know how to take notes in class, read different types of texts and for different purposes, study for tests, or write papers.  In addition, they struggle to manage their time and prioritize, in the face of so many high- and low-tech distractions and a world very different from the one in which their parents grew up.   

This was the case of a 9th grader from Westbrook, Connecticut who was failing his history class.  Although he came to us for tutoring in history, the real issue was student mastery.  Instead of focusing on history, per se, the tutor taught him how to read his textbook, how to summarize the information in his own words, ask questions of the text, and synthesize the material as he read each chapter.  After only a few sessions, his history tests went from Ds and Fs to As.  He had been failing not because he couldn’t learn the material, but because he lacked academic study skills.  Indeed, he didn’t just improve his history grades, but the grades in all his classes, and gained confidence as well.  

If being prepared for high school work by the end of the 8th grade predicts college readiness, this means that developing solid academic skills by the 8th grade also predicts college readiness. 

Why?  Because being able to function successfully in the first year of college also means being prepared for a career.  The majority of jobs in the fields that are growing most rapidly today (and that pay well and provide advancement opportunities) require a level of knowledge and the skills expected of the first year college student.

The Learning Consultants
(860) 510-0410
dcapuano@learningconsultantsgroup.com