April has been the boldest month of 2010 at the Hut. To motivate students to finish out the year strong, we have turned up the heat and let loose the competition. Study Hut’s “Student of the Month” award has just been instituted and the first draft winners have been chosen. Our high school winner was one of my most successful students because she has shown such vast improvement in the short amount of time I have tutored her. Paige first came to me with unspeakable grades in her algebra class. At first, I was confused because she understood most of her homework but showed a plethora of poor test grades.

Through talking to her about her thought process, we discovered that she had a mild form of test-taking anxiety. After consulting my boss about an effective approach with Paige, we went to work. She increased her visits from one to three sessions per week with me in order to allot time for timed practice tests. My approach was to do her math problems alongside her and compare our answers instead of watching her do all the work by herself. She worked exceedingly well with my “team” approach because it helped her correct her own mistakes and take control of the session.

After working with Paige for several weeks, I have seen rapid improvement in her comprehension, retention, and esteem. She craves the practice problems because she has seen the positive results for herself. After she brought in her first ‘A,’ I jumped at the chance to nominate her for this award. Since then, she has walked through the door with two more ‘A’ test scores and higher expectations for herself. I look forward to our sessions and when she brings in her tests, I vicariously feel like an ‘A’ student all over again. Students of the month keep this job rewarding and engaging. Keep the good grades rolling!

Yesterday was a busy Thursday. In fact, every school week there is a busy Thursday, whether you come to Study Hut Tutoring or not. With tests and quizzes, homework and projects, six classes of papers going in and out of the backpack everyday and all your friends jammed into one classroom, the task of managing a workload is impossible. Am I right? Let us take a quick look of how this impossible situation appears when our 8th grader Corey sits down for his tutoring hour. Corey is a very sharp student who is able to breeze through his pre-algebra assignments. He is very capable in other areas too. He is maintaining a strong grade in social studies, however, his grades dont reflect his intelligence.

So what is the matter? What do we do? How can we bump up these “C” grades up if Corey doesn’t need help with the actual subject matter? Lucky for Corey, the Study Hut knows exactly what to do. After speaking with his mom, I know she is frustrated with Corey’s sluggish performance around the house. So now Corey is at Study Hut, sitting down with me. The first thing I do is look at his daily planner. It is a bad sign when the whole thing is blank. The planner is the tool that fosters accountability, so if the planner is blank, Corey isn’t even accountable with himself, let alone with parents, teachers, and his tutor. The next step is manually going through the backpack. This is crucial to set the record straight and explain the reasoning and utility of behind using the daily planner.

After all, why do something if it doesn’t serve a greater purpose, save time, or help in the short term and in the long term. Young students are no different. You would never do a lot of things the right way if there was no direct or indirect benefit. After digging through every subject and organizing the folder, we see that there is a pile of old, completed work that can go into a folder and can be stashed away at home in the closet. The other pile was larger than I would like. This pile had a ton of incomplete work. Our plan from here on out at home everyday and at tutoring is as follows:

1)Write in the planner for every subject, during each class period, every week.

2) take notes each class period, everyday

3) make a list prior to tutoring of what we will be working on at Study Hut, and what will still have to be done at home.

4) Make one study tool (flashcards, outline, study guide, practice test) for each class each week.

5) show all of this to the tutor to remain accountable during bi-weekly tutoring sessions.

These simple tasks will, and have already started to, pull grades up, increase accountability, and lead to domination.

Having worked at The Study Hut for the past few years, I have learned quite a bit regarding the effects of study habits on students’ success in school. Developing a solid studying and time management routine at a young age can be one of the most important things a student can do for his or her educational career. I believe that by being effective at studying and being able to wisely mange your time, you will have positive results in both the short and long run. A college professor once told me that “Education is an attitude, not an IQ”, and as the more years that go by, the more he said made sense to me. Students that know how to efficiently approach learning will always have more success than the ones that don’t. It is as simple as that.

At Study Hut Tutoring, we understand this principle and place a high value not just on learning, but learning the proper way. The key to all of this is to stimulate the brain in as many ways as possible, so that when students are asked to recall information, typically via an exam, the brain has built enough strong neuron connections to quickly and easily pull information from it.

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