Study Hut tutors could not be more excited for the big Finals push. We have students from AVID coming in for private tutoring all week, but we also have a huge event scheduled for Saturday. As in years past, we will be hosting an all day tutoring and study session on campus at Palos Verdes High School. We will have access to multiple different classrooms, and tutors will get to go into different rooms and help students with the specific subjects they need most help with.

This year, there will undoubtedly be math tutoring, science tutoring (including biology tutoring and chemistry tutoring), history tutoring, from World History and EHAP to U.S. History, Government, and Economics tutoring. Math tutoring will include algebra tutoring, geometry tutoring, algebra 2 tutoring, pre-calculus tutoring, trigonometry tutoring, and maybe even some calculus and FTS tutoring.

We will also, of course, have English tutoring, writing tutoring for students with an upcoming final paper, Spanish tutoring (all levels), and probably a few other subjects as well.

The event is free (and required!) for all AVID students, and speaking from past experience, it is an extremely productive event for all students involved. The teachers always come to support, supervise, and offer their knowledge as well.

And best of all, we are getting El Taco Man ordered, so he will be showing up with his cart, and all the tacos any young man or woman can eat. Does it get any better than this? I think not. See you on Saturday.

Hello! My name is Tori and I have been working at Study Hut for about two months now. I absolutely love it!! The environment and people here are so friendly and welcoming. I graduated from Mira Costa High School in 2007 and since then got my BA at San Diego State University and I am currently getting my teaching credential at CSU Long Beach. I love working with kids and this job is not only great practice for my future, but it is so rewarding. I now have about six students that I see on a regular basis, once or twice a week. I look forward to seeing them each week and helping them grow as a student. My students range from elementary to high school age and I have already learned so much from each and every one of them. Most often I help them study for a test. The first thing we do is gather all the material needed to study for the test. I ask them how they feel about the test and what material they know and what material they need to study more. From there we review all the material so that I can truly see what they do and do not know and we then start studying! I find flashcards to be the most helpful for any type of learner so I have my students make flashcards for the material they do not know. Depending on what kind of learner they are I either have them write down facts, draw pictures, or make acronyms in order to learn the material in a way they are most comfortable with. I then give my students anywhere from five to fifteen minutes to study the flashcards while I make a practice test for them. Once they are done studying I verbally quiz them on the material and then have them take a practice test towards the end of the session to see how much they have progressed; I usually see great improvement! I leave my students with words of encouragement, sometimes a to do list to finish studying, and another practice test for them to take closer to the time of the test. Well I am off to tutor now!

In the majority of sports, there are multiple coaches for each different position on the field coaching a different discipline or tactic of the game. Like in football, first there is the head coach, then the offensive and defensive coordinators running the offensive and defense, next there are coaches for each different position: quarterback coach, linebackers coach, running backs coach, etc. On top of that most athletes, especially the elite athletes have additional coaching outside of their team structure to improve their skills and become as good as possible in their discipline. However, in school and academic pursuits the students are left to learn with only one teacher for each subject who has 30+ students each class and normally teaches at least 4 classes a day. That leaves one teacher to 120+ students for each subject to enrich the minds and make our students elite academically.

Now why is it that sports teams have multiple different coaches/teachers making themselves available to a much smaller ratio of student athletes while teachers are left to educate huge numbers of students. With so much competition there is between students to get into the colleges of their choices and to get the good grades and all the scholarship money handled out, students both in the lower and higher ends or scale can benefit from the structured learning and help that comes from a tutor. A tutor can serve as a knowledge coach in some senses. Tutors can act in improving the students study habits and helping them push past that barrier and improve their grades or get into the college or their dreams the same way a strength and conditioning coach can help an athlete lift that final weight or hit that home run to win the championship game. It has be postulated that it takes 10000 hours to become an expert in anything and athletes take as much extra help as they can to become that expert, but there needs to be a more focus put into students building towards those 10000 hours in scholastic pursuits and I can guarantee that a one on one tutoring session with a Study Hut tutor counts as at least 2 of those hours.