As we gear up for the fall, it’s becoming clear that school might not look the same as usual. Tasked with balancing the safety of their students with the imperatives of providing an excellent education, many school districts are implementing full online school for the fall or a hybrid solution that blends online learning with traditional classroom instruction. Online learning can present challenges for students who need greater individualized attention and more direct instruction than virtual instruction can provide. Marks Education can help. We are well positioned to assist students with academic tutoring in a range of subjects from US History to BC Calculus. Read how our tutors have worked with students across different subject areas and how we might be able to help your child with academic subject tutoring.
English and Social Studies Tutoring (by Sarah Newport)
As a licensed social studies teacher, I have assisted many students as they write history papers, compose English literature essays, or study for AP Geography tests among other tasks. What was the role of women in Jane Austen’s society as revealed in Pride and Prejudice? Did Otto von Bismarck rule with a new type of conservatism? How did the progressive movement differ from the populist movement in the United States? How did changes in military technology contribute to the decline of feudalism? These are some of the topics my students and I have discussed or written about in our academic tutoring sessions. In addition to reviewing content and the larger themes of history or the connections between different works of literature, we discuss the best ways to approach studying – how to be an active reader, what constitutes good note-taking, how to plan for the month and week ahead while creating priorities for the next day.
History and English tutors at Marks Education can help students with their assigned readings or can plan enrichment activities to supplement school requirements. For example, I am currently reading The Hobbit with one of my students. Although the book is not assigned reading for her, it explores many of the themes that she will encounter in her English class next year when she reads the epic Beowulf: the hero’s quest, the characteristics of a hero and antihero, supernatural foes and allies, and the concept of honor. Similarly, over the spring I read 1984 with a student who had read Animal Farm for school so that we could delve deeper into Orwell’s denunciation of totalitarianism as well as discuss his exploration of governments’ use of propaganda, fear, and technology.
Math Tutoring (by Anthony Celino)
As a former high school math teacher, I love helping students engage with math content by finding applications that spark their interests. Having a tough time relating to trigonometric graphs? Let’s see how adjusting wavelengths and amplitudes relates to music or theme park rides or interstellar communication. Not seeing the point of triangle congruence proofs? Let’s explore how the deduction and logical reasoning skills used in such proofs are the scaffolding for legal argumentation and debate.
My previous classroom experience and knowledge of pacing allows me to plan out a math tutoring curriculum for a student that spans one month, five months or even an entire academic year. That expertise, married with the flexibility of providing one-on-one math tutoring, permits me to constantly adjust the throttle in order to find the optimal speed for any student, while making sure to cover all the key concepts and keep the student engaged. As we continue with the current phase of hybrid learning, consider the role a professional math tutor can play in supplementing, enhancing or even paralleling a student’s math instruction. Math teachers will be juggling several additional tasks this year and will likely have less capacity to cater to the individual needs of each student. Marks Education tutors teach all math levels from pre-Algebra to AP BC Calculus and beyond. We are well-trained and experienced math tutors who are perfectly suited to fill in the gaps and provide a bulwark against math anxiety.
Science Tutoring (by Dan Bloss)
With over a decade of experience in math and science tutoring, I’ve learned the importance of helping students grasp the big picture before wading into the nitty gritty details. Many students come to me for AP Biology tutoring, overwhelmed with the number of new terms and concepts that they are supposed to understand and remember. This barrage of new information, presented without enough of the “big picture” to contextualize it, can lead to disaster on assessments. Students spend long hours memorizing key terms, anatomy, or processes, but still miss easy quiz and test questions because they don’t understand how these individual items fit into the larger picture and are missing the key connections for it all to “click”. A good science tutor can help. What good is knowing that the third step of Cellular Respiration – the Electron Transport Chain – produces 34 ATP molecules per glucose molecule if we don’t grasp that the overall process of cellular respiration is the key method for cells to break down “food” (a.k.a. glucose) and create energy (a.k.a. ATP)?
As a science tutor, it’s been incredibly rewarding seeing students have that “Ah-ha!” moment, once we’ve zoomed out and made sense of the broader topics and then slowly zoomed in on the specific information that they’re expected to understand and memorize. Provided with the context in which to place those new terms and ideas, everything makes much more sense.
As students navigate this new world of primarily virtual education, Marks Education tutors are here to help them further their learning and ensure the deeper understanding necessary to not only survive, but also thrive.
For more information on academic subject tutoring, as well as information on small group tutoring and rates, please contact Kirsten Thomas at 240-800-4413 or via email at [email protected].
