Tutor, what to look for when selecting

I've had experience with daughter and son using tutors.

 

Daughter was a below average student who benefited greatly from the individual attention, focus and routine of a standard learning center (Huntington).

 

Son was an above average student who needed some help to thrive in advanced courses.  He responded really well to tutoring from older NHS kids who were also athletes.  My son looked up to, and wanted to impress those guys.   We were fortunate that his teachers helped make that connection.  They also helped reinforce the idea that it’s cool to be smart.

Cool to be smart, I could use some help reinforcing that with my son.

Thanks for sharing your experience.  I like the idea of having him work with the older NHS kids.

My older son was a tutor with NHS and I just read this post to my younger player/son to do the same, to maybe make a difference to a younger althlete.

 

But to answer some of your questions (incase you need more than a high school student can give):

 

Check with the guidance counselor or guidance office for recommendations, or maybe the school system has a list of tutors that have already been screened.  A neighbor used a college professor that tutored on the side, so check with your local college or community college.  She said it was the best money she has ever spent (not having to fight math with her son).  Plus, her child wouldn't think of goofing off with a college prof, like he would with another student.

 

As a side note, don't send your student for help right at the end of the course.  My older son said some kid came in right before the exam expecting him to (re)teach the entire course (chemistry) in 1 1/2 hours. 

Suatg - 

 

Good topic.  Just for background.  I have no kids.  But I spent 4 years teaching and the last 5 years working with high school baseball players and their families during the recruiting process.

 

Your first question about "important qualities in a tutor" is a good place to start.  Obviously you want to pair your son with someone that has the subject knowledge.  The more knowledge the better (perhaps).  But just like in finding a hitting coach, the relationship between teacher and student may be as important as anything.  If after the first few sessions your son doesn't seem to be meshing well, don't be afraid to try someone else.  Just because a coach doesn't mesh with a player doesn't make that player or coach bad, just means they don't mesh.  Hitting & test taking is all about confidence.  Find the person that works well with your son.

 

Couple of notes... 

The teachers in his high school probably offer tutoring sessions during free periods, before or after school.  I'd recommend going to his teachers sessions.  That effort alone can push the grade from B+ to A.  But to go back to relationships, he may want to sit in on other teachers sessions to see if the way that teacher communicates the subject matter clicks better with him.  And most of these sessions are probably free.

 

There are "professional tutoring" sessions.  Do your research.  Ask some other parents.  Ask those companies to provide some references.  Just like anything else there are good companies and not so good ones.

 

Keep this in mind...I may offend some people here... this is a BASEBALL board.  The likelihood of earning any substantial scholarship (read full ride) is slim.  The math just doesn't work.  A student is much more likely earning scholarship money through strong academics then through baseball ability.  So if you were looking to "invest" in the future, academics would be the smart bet.

 

I often tell parents the following...

1 - Want your kid to get a "college" scholarship?  Get him a tutor.  (They usually get excited then disappointed.)

2 - Want your kid to get an "athletic" scholarship?  Tell him to quit playing baseball and go play football.  (Its simple math guys. 85 vs 11.7)

3 - Want your kid to play college baseball?  Totally doable! Just don't expect the coach to pay your entire bill.  (Parents of younger parents begin to regret the 10's of thousands they spent on lessons only to make their kid "this" much better.)

 

You son has not gotten to SAT time yet.  But here is a parting story.  Family I know was ready to send their son to a nice private D3 school.  Right place for the kid.  Many privates have high retail costs.  Here's a secret, nobody is paying retail.  First place to look is on their "Tuition & Fees" page on their website.  Usually you'll find a spreadsheet that tells you if your kid has X GPA & Y SAT he qualifies for the "Presidents Scholarship".  The higher the numbers, the better the scholarship.  This particular family invested $1,000 prior to senior year on an SAT prep.  Keep in mind the kid was already above the minimum's to get in.  After the prep class his scores went up enough to move them to the next level of scholarships.  Saved the family an additional $5,000..... per year!  Good luck getting that kind of ROI with a pitching lesson.

 

Good luck. 

 

Rich

www.PlayInSchool.com

www.twitter.com/PlayInSchool

 

Thank you all for some outstanding advice and for sharing your experiences. This has to be the best site a baseball parent could be a part of.

 

I now have re-assurance that a tutor is the right move and a solid way forward in seeking the right tutor.

 

I can not thank you enough.

We have and are having great success with Sylvan Learning Centers. Son has gone from the 30th percentile in reading comprehenision to 80th percentile in about 6 months.Presently we have him signed up for an ACT prep class which he will take on Sept 21st.

I was talking to some fellow parents and we were discussing how much we have spent on baseball (youth club teams-HS summer teams -showcases) and in reality - the money we are spending on tutors and ACT prep will probably show 10X the benefit in regards to college.

This is a very good topic.  Thank you for initiating!

 

From our recruiting experiences, standardized test scores (ACT or SAT) mattered the most.  Academically, it was the one way in which college coaches could compare kids nationwide.  That may not be fair to those kids who don't test well, but it's somewhat understandable that coaches will use it as an "objective" measure of academic performance.

 

GPA and curriculum and high school attended were all factors too.  I'm sure there were more academic factors than that (e.g., academic index).  But we found in iterations with college coaches that they generally did not spend much time using GPA as a determining factor of initial interest...presuming the unweighted GPA was above 3.0.  We found 3.0 to be the floor for the "academic" schools that my sons engaged.  We also found that a letter grade of C+ or lower was a really bad thing to have on the transcript, regardless of course difficulty.  So B- or above in any single class was the floor for us.

 

My oldest struggled with foreign language.  So we had a Spanish tutor his freshman and sophomore years of high school.  My youngest struggles with Algebra II, so we have a math tutor.

 

If your interest is academic schools, it all matters.  We found performance on the SAT or ACT matters most for most of the schools.  So we invested in test prep to help familiarize our sons and (hopefully) help them improve their scores.

 

Good luck!

 

 

make sure the tutor is butt-ugly...