Cognitive Workshop

This is a day we’ve been looking forward to for 10 years.

Every once in a while there is a revolutionary service that comes along that changes everything for students.

In 2006, when Study Hut first opened, there was a new local place, where for the first time, students, of all levels of ability, were the ones that wanted to go to tutoring—a place that they call could call their own.

A real life Study Hut emerged with a culture that began to make all the difference.

This culture changed the lives of the students with whom we worked, and of the parents that dropped them off. And we changed too.

As our students persevered and started to graduate, we felt “old” for the first time.

Despite this odd phenomenon, we conversely found ourselves in a state of perpetual renewal after each school year passed, tweaking and reflecting, innovating and systematizing.

After discovering that each year after students had moved on, we were able to pass the lessons from that specific subject, in most cases from a specific teacher, onto the next new student.

So in essence, everyone who has ever come through the door has added to our village knowledge stew. From the terribly momentous moments of triumph (which there are many) to the devastating reports of failure (which there are now far fewer), these sessions made our brew heartier and more helpful than other, less seasoned recipes. Minimally we often had to struggle with simply “what not to do” as any adolescent entity can attest.

In an effort to further simplify the onslaught of complexities that our next new student families would inevitably confront (must we name them all? If you say so, but hold on: fractions, word problems, spelling tests, summer reading, low grades, bad scores, timing, endurance, concepts, retention, siblings, in-laws, allergies, groundings, forgetting, refusals, missing work, tears, sport schedules, missed school, chem, bio, stats, APs, admissions, dictation, grades, parents, friends, enemies, bad teacher, frustration, exhaustion, stress, heartbreak, heartache, headaches, test anxiety, underperformance, motivation, to name a few…), we were jointly driven to innovate.

And so innovate we did.

In 2010, we challenged the $10 billion test prep industry when we launched our state-of-the-art SAT/ACT program: never before were students able to see such an array of conceptual breakdowns with the most detailed analytics in the world. With over 5000 video solutions, and a table of contents more extensive than that of the competition’s, students were quick to figure out where to sign up. After hacking each test, writing 4 million lines of code from scratch that seamlessly complements the corresponding 2-inch-thick lesson book, we saw (and continue to see) your scores blow traditional industry gains out of the water, and in record time.

Yet, among your successes, the question in our minds still remains: what can we do early-on to make school AND testing easier this fall and from now on? Do we have to wait until our feet are held to the fire (and subsequently burned) to get ready? How can we all avoid the difficulties from classes and tests that we all hear about, well-in advance?

Parents, students, and tutors alike have all been not-so-secretly longing for the day of being able to practice with a grade-level specific, training manual, which fosters understanding for every class from kindergarten through sophomore year. This tool would make school a lot easier and less stressful.

It’s no secret that for years we’ve wanted to deliver a game-changing service (ideally served over the summer) that specifically equips students for the rigors they will face in every subject and on every exam, standardized or otherwise, in a cool, fun, way (it has to be cool and fun otherwise who’s going to keep doing it.)We’ve wanted our students to have a shortcut that, when completed, helps to detach the difficulty and stress from the school and test-taking process. Quite simply, we want our local kids to have a big leg up in the fight to be a ready challenger: call it localism if you like.

And by improving foundational levels in a few key core areas, far beyond the averages indicated in standardized state testing, widespread student success can become attainable and ultimately democratic across the academic landscape; allowing all students to reconnect with consistently strong grades.

Study Hut Tutoring is proud to announce a brand new, one-of-a-kind, Cognitive Workshop:

In this Workshop, the 1-on-1 student/tutor team focuses exclusively on reading, writing, common core foundations, and literary analysis for K-10 students—all the skills necessary to succeed in school, on tests, in college, via email, and in business.

Study Hut Tutoring’s Cognitive Workshop is revolutionary for three reasons.

1) It helps students learn more effectively (comprehension/retention/fluency…these counteract the negative side of the Matthew Effect by helping everyone “get richer” with context-free-decoding)

2)The captivating lesson plans drive improvement in student grade point averages (by making school easier, more digestible, especially word problems)

3) It helps improve reading/writing/language scores on state testing, private school testing, and the SAT/ACT exams. Even math scores go up.

To understand how we developed an academic “magic bullet” for all grade levels, you’ll have to meet our developer (there’s only on our team)–Grace Choe. After all these years she still has no idea how amazing she is—she will be world famous for her efforts one day (on the level of Kahn Academy) but for now she’ll be our little secret.

Here’s “amazing” Grace in a nutshell: she grew up in the South Bay, graduated from USC, and began her teaching career in Seoul… we’ll come back to Korea in a minute. After getting married, she moved to Luxemburg to live, instruct students, and to start her own family.

Grace’s resume is equally as impressive as most things on which she conscientiously decides to embark. Take a look. She spent the last 8 years working in private education and developing curriculum in a neighborhood known as the “Mecca for private education in Korea” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daechi-dong)…the neighborhoods or “dongs” (insert adolescent low-chuckle here) are in Gangnam…yep, just like the song with nearly 3 billion views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0

Grace gulps when you ask her how competitive the academic environment is in Daechi-dong, and then smiles before she says, “it may be the most competitive in the world.” She’s not lying. The workloads for her elementary school students rival that of a high school AP student. Grace’s students, for 8 years, have been systematically decoding the English language, scoring terribly well on exams, and earning acceptance to top US universities, even though English isn’t students’ first language.

Simply put, the basic blocks of reading help to drastically increase student understanding and cognitive skills through comprehension. That’s why colleges like strong critical reading scores on the SAT/ACT exams–it means students can understand new material in a far more rapid and impactful way.

You’ll have to come in for a complimentary assessment, see where you stand, so we can help to bridge any gaps you may have in terms of reaching your goals. Looking forward to hearing from you!