Study Hut is the greatest tutoring center in Manhattan Beach because it’s not like school. When I first walked into the Study Hut, I was expecting off-white walls and a silent ambience; I was expecting bored students and tired tutors. These were my past experiences when I tried out various tutor centers back in high school. But when I went through the front door of the Study Hut, all my stereotypes were immediately crushed. There was a cozy feel to the rooms, each with a different theme, from a jungle room, to an India room, to a beach room. There were young fresh tutors who were teaching with passion and patience while keeping students entertained with a friendliness so often absent in tutors.

Students often need a change of pace from school to effectively do their homework and learn the concepts. The Study Hut offers this unique environment, where students can unwind, do their homework, work out the kinks before a test, and of course munch on a few snacks. Most importantly, aside from the fun that both the students and tutors have, there are immediate results with the students. Owners Rob, Sean-Patrick, and all other managerial staff do an amazing job of keeping track of students’ progress and keep open and honest communication with both the student and the parent. This keeps everyone from the tutor, to the student, to the parent accountable and produces results.

So again, why is the Study Hut the greatest tutoring center in Manhattan Beach? Because everyone has fun, everyone learns, and everyone earns better grades.

Most truthfully from a newbie tutor

You may have heard this one before. It involves a ceramics class.

It was a fairly large and popular class at the school, so the teacher had to split it into two sections: Ceramics 101a and Ceramics 101b.

The teacher, a brilliant potter but a capricious and insufferable man, decided that he’d grade each of his sections differently and arbitrarily.

On the first day of class he announced to the students of 101a the following:
“At the end of the semester you will be required to hand in one pot and one pot only. I will judge your skill, artistry, and technical prowess based on what I see in that one pot, and that in turn will decide your grade for the whole semester.”

An hour later, he announced to the students of 101b a very different message:
“At the end of the semester, I will grade your performance based solely on the number of pots you complete throughout the year. I don’t care how well they’re executed, what shape they are, or how quickly you worked on them. All I care about is how many you make. The more you make the higher your grade will be.”

In short, one group was to be evaluated on the quality of their work, and the other on their quantity.

Here’s where things get strange.

At the end of the semester, the students from the Quantity Class produced better pots than the students from the Quality Class. Far better. Truly masterful work. On the other hand, the final projects handed in by the Quality Class resembled the pots that the students from the Quantity Class were making on their first few days.

What is the lesson here? In short, it’s practice makes perfect. The only way to get to success is to first fail. To get good at something you need to do it. A lot.

So for that reason we here at Study Hut in Manhattan Beach don’t just recite information to our students and expect them to absorb it. We test them on it. Ruthlessly. We make them fail repeatedly when they’re with us, in the hopes that when they are in the exam room they will succeed.

I remember when I was a Mira Costa high School student, summer just starting, tried to forget about school as much as I could.  This behavior is quite common among high school student.  This ultimately would result with most of my friends and I spending the last weeks of summer reading non-stop all of our assigned summer reading books.  As my family usually chooses to go on our family summer vacation during those weeks, my memory of those vacations is marred with memories of: If Beagle Street Could Talk, The Crucible, An Affair to Remember, One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest, and the other books our teachers said we needed to read.

Looking back I wished I started reading those books earlier in the summer.  There was no real need to wait so long.  I have heard kids make the excuse that if they start reading early in the summer they won’t remember the details and promptly fail the “rigorous” summer reading tests.  While that line of reasoning seems quite logical, it’s also been accounted for by the Mira Costa English teachers.  The summer reading tests are very simple short multiple choice exams, asking easy basic plot questions; the point is to just make sure that the taker simply had read the book.   Over the first few weeks class time is spent reviewing the summer reading books preparing the students for a more involved analytical essay.   So there is no advantage of cramming all the reading in the last weeks of summer.  Instead, start those books right now.  Read when you can.  Find your-self with a spare hour or two at home with no plans?  Spend some of that time on your summer reading.  By reading a few hours at a time throughout the whole summer you can easily avoid cramming them all at the end.  And in my case, I could have enjoyed my summer vacations much more.