Tutoring is intense. One of the major benefits of high-impact tutoring is that it is intensive, with regular meetings and in very small groups. Most of our work at Community TEACH is done in one-on-one situations that are powerful precisely because of presence. Both the tutor and student are there together, in the thinking and the learning, each and every second of a session. Tutoring also tends to be cyclical and moments of transition bring a lot of emotion. Over the last few months I've said goodbye or put on pause a set of students as the school year wrapped up, worked with an almost entirely new batch of students during the summer, and now I'm getting up to speed with students in the new school year, many of whom are new to me. Tutoring follows the rhythm of the school year and its goodbyes, hellos, and pauses. Yet the depth and continuity of the relationships with tutors are often at another level compared to school-based educators. Tutoring is less strictly rule bound ...
As she finishes coloring the last cell, the tutoring student is beaming as brightly as her multiplication fact chart. She has proven her mastery of multiplication facts through card games, dice rolls, verbal quizzing, and good old fashioned worksheets. She already knew her 1s, 2s, and 10s three weeks ago. Since then she has learned the rest with various strategies. Most of the time she built on what she knew, and a few facts she just had to memorize. She did it, and nobody can take that away from her. As her tutor, after I give her a crisp high five. Then I find myself reveling in the fact that the chart represents more than facts. Unlike a classroom teacher who needs to attend to many children at once, I was with her every step of the way in her journey to fluency. I was able to reinforce the underlying concepts of multiplication all along the way. I am confident that genuine understanding underlies her ability to recall these facts quickly and accurately. This will serve her well as ...