From iLead to AVID, Study Hut covers ground in the South Bay!
Study Hut has had the privilege to extend our tutoring services to local high schools in the South Bay, including South High, Palos Verdes High School and Palos Verdes Peninsula High School. We are able to do this by orchestrating in-class programs like AVID (http://www.avid.org/) in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District and ILEAD through the Torrance Unified School District. In a typical AVID or ILEAD class, Study Hut will send a number of tutors (typically ranging from four to eight) who each specialize in variety of academic subjects. Our tutors then have the unique opportunity to break the class into smaller groups of students based on subject each student feels that he or she need the most help with.
Last Tuesday was an awesome day at both South High and Peninsula! We arrived at South High for ILEAD at 8am to offer additional tutoring on late start mornings. We then separated the students into a “Math and Science” classroom, and an “English, History and Foreign Language” classroom. Tori and I were put in charge of English, History and Languages room. After an hour of answering questions about everything from World War I and the differences between Preterite and Imperfect in Spanish, our manager Justin was nice enough to take us out to a quick breakfast to refuel before we headed up to PVPHS to tutor in AVID for their third and fourth periods.In AVID we like to take a more hands on approach by encouraging the students to break into groups and take turns writing their questions on the board. Their peers then use their notes and textbooks to help them solve their problem. In my English groups in AVID, we had some remarkable discussions about Animal Farm (my favorite) and determining Direct Objects vs. Predicate Nominatives.
Palos Verdes High School AVID Family! It’s time for our 5th Annual Car Wash. In this blog, I will try to address some questions you may have about the Car Wash. Here we go….
DO WE NEED EVERYONE’S HELP?
Yes. We need everyone’s help.
HOW CAN I / MY FAMILY HELP?
Your family can help in some of the following ways:
1) Attend the Car Wash and wash cars. Bring the whole family. It’s a fun day!
2) Bake some delicious treats for the bake sale end of the car wash. If you’re able, package them for sale, but if you’re not able to package them don’t worry. You can bring them game day or you can deliver them the day before to your AVID teacher’s classroom.
3). Bring liquid refreshments to the car wash. A case of water or a gatorade type beverage is fantastic. A 6-pack of water or beverage is fabulous. Bring what you like to drink and bring a couple of extra for someone else and then we’ll have plenty. Bring your drinks on game day or bring over the next couple of days to your AVID teacher’s classroom.
4) Bring food for you and a few others. Families in the past have brought: breakfast burritos, bagels, subway, pizza, Taco Bell, and more. Again, bring what you like and if you feed 2-10 other people then we’ll be able to keep all our troops fueled up for the morning and post car wash clean up.
5) Bring a cooler for the drinks. If you bring it game day, ice would be clutch. If you bring it to your AVID teacher’s classroom by Friday we will get the ice (if available down in the athletic trainer’s office).
6) Do you or someone you know play in a band? We need more performers for the concert end of our Car Wash and Concert.
7) Bring some towels home to wash and dry. If everyone takes one load home, that will “spread the wealth” on this fun job. Wash and dry at your leisure and return to your AVID teacher.
8) Wear a costume on the day of the wash!AVID CAR WASH FUN (and some not so fun) FACTS
The Car Wash started 5 years ago and almost nobody (except the AVID teachers) thought it would be successful. The highest anyone at PV High had made on a car wash was between $1,000 to $2,000. When you factor in the $50 most AVID families spend on their 5 car wash tickets and all the students at PVHS buying car wash tickets for extra credit, we have made $10,000 or more many years on the car wash.
Where does the money go? The money is deposited into our ASB account. Our biggest expense is tutoring. Our tutors do not make a ton per hour, but over the course of 10 months, it adds up. Also, we pay the teacher tutors for their good work in January and June when they man our after school finals tutorials. Other money is used to defer the cost of buses when there is an AVID trip, or to pay for the substitute teachers when an AVID teacher is chaperoning an AVID trip, to pay for the AVID t-shirt (coming soon) you receive the first semester each year, to pay for some classroom supplies, and some Fun Friday costs and more! The money cannot come out of our AVID ASB account without a receipt. So everything is documented and on the up and up.
THANK YOU for helping make the AVID Car Wash and Concert (and Bake Sale) one of the best days of the year. See you Saturday. Teachers will be at school from 6:45 am to the end of wash (hopefully around 1:30 if we have a large clean up committee 🙂
This is an awesome email I got recently from the President of the company that helps us with our “Getting into College” services. They have developed some really cool software that helps us create the most efficient and fun tutoring process humanly possible. While their company is located in Newport Beach, and we do offer this college tutoring service in Newport Beach, we are also starting to work with many students in Palos Verdes, Hermosa Beach, and Manhattan Beach as well. Please email sp@studyhut.com with any questions.
We have a woman that asked if we had a reference for the licensing program and I thought about you. Granted, you are the first tutoring company that we have brought on as we are ramping up our training now before we start selling our program on a wide scale level. If you would be willing to discuss your thoughts on the value of the licensing program, even though you haven’t been on it for all that long, that would be really helpful.
Diane is the name of the lady and I will share with her you contact information, if that is cool with you. She will be joining our next focus group training, which will be June 2-3, at our office here in NB. June 2 will be all about Product Knowledge – which you did- but June 3 will be Build Your Business. This is completely new portion of our training and integrates what I think was the missing piece from the initial training at Study Hut. We are really excited about the entire training program and know it will provide the utter confidence and understanding in delivering the program, along with how to really assimilate the program into a tutoring company to ensure their ultimate success. I know your students have been seeing a ton of success with our software, so I really appreciate your help.
You and Rob are invited to attend the upcoming training, or just the second day if you’d like.
I recently received an email that gives a good perspective on teachers and their stance on district fund allocation. This thread is admittedly slanted, and only reflects one person’s point of view. Nonetheless, I find it thought-provoking. Please feel free to email info@studyhut.com if you would like to propose a rebuttal. I will post the best response:
Today we spoke about students needing to keep track of their own grades in the last 7-9 weeks of school here since teachers are not posting now as a way to get attention to the 180 days of school issue and to try to convince the school board that teachers who haven’t gotten a raise in some years deserve one. You may know that when money was ultra tight, we teachers agreed to cut our own (and more importantly the students’) work schedule as a way to furlough our salaries and keep the district solvent. [And we know you all chipped in more than your share as well to PEF and I do the same for my kids in MBUSD]. Anyway, it’s an allocation of district revenue issue that everyone should be weighing in on, and teachers are financially stressed and as inflation raises everyone’s cost of living, it is getting more and more difficult to live on a reduced work schedule. Not to mention, should we as a society, be reducing our educational calendar as the rest of the globe certainly is not decreasing theirs? If you disagree with me, I certainly would respect your differing viewpoint, and welcome you to share it with me. But, for better or worse right now, we need to be extra vigilante of our own school performance and stay on top of our homework and prepare for exams. There are only 7 weeks to Memorial Day (including this week) and then final exams are the week after a severely truncated Memorial week (with Monday off and 2 senior project minimum days for students).
This awesome commercial was filmed by students from Palos Verdes High School in the broadcast journalism department. The commercial aired for the first time across campus this week during the Live From 205 news. Live From 205 is a nationally recognized broadcast journalism program, and Study Hut is proud to have been involved in this effort. Congrats to Live From 205 for all of your hard work, and thanks for highlighting our tutoring office in the Redondo Beach Riviera. Check it out:
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.
AVID 10,
Bagels tomorrow! Yay! Thank you bagel families!
Grade POs due. EC to write a letter to last guest speakers: Michelle and Laura.
Room 306 is ours thanks to Ms. Sheridan who wanted to keep the room but realized it was perfect for our AVID class and gave it up for us. A big thank you to Ms. Sheridan who comes back from maternity leave this coming Monday!
Thanks to all who RSVPed (Yes or No). I attended the AVID 12 dinner tonight and it was a great time. I doubly look forward to ours on Wednesday!
Tomorrow we will spend half the class on our essay. Tuesday will be the same and notes are due Tuesday as well.
We had a great lesson from Studyhut’s SP and Rob Stone on Wednesday where we learned that for difficult problems with “easy” answers, it’s a great opportunity to “work backwards” and plug in the answer choices into the problem to find your answer (starting with the middle number). Thanks Rob and SP! HW for practice on this lesson is out of the book and is due our next Wednesday A day in 2 weeks.
Wednesday is a tutorial day in AVID. Also, your SAT homework is due. Please have that ready to be turned in to the bin. Hand it in after you go over it with our SAT tutors. The SAT plan is as follows:
1) go over “Plug in the numbers” assignment from two times ago,
2) review any questions on the internet/computer problem assignment (although those were meant to be on the easier side….not to make you feel bad if you got them wrong….).
3) a new lesson will be taught with a new assignment. New assignment will be due on Wedneday November 30.
Tutorial to follow SAT prep.
Friday we will:
1) meeting with tutors (please have your planner for the meeting)
2) finish the 60 Minutes
3) read some Lone Survivor
4) catch up on some recently ignored vocabulary
5) take a long since promised excursion to the market in the last 40 minutes of class
Guest speaker was rescheduled for that date.
Tuesday before Thanksgiving:
Notes due. Guest speaker. Read some Lone Survivor
Monday after Thanksgiving:
Nothing due. Tutorial was cancelled.
Important dates:
Jan. 11, 12 and 17: after school tutorials from 3:00-4:00 with PVHS teachers
Jan. 14 (Saturday): Study sessions from 9:30 to 11:30 and 12:30-2:230. Attend one or both. Taco Man coming from 11:30 to 12:30. Everyone to be fed. This is a reward for an amazing job on the car wash!
We did it! Wow! Another great PV AVID car wash. Standing Ovation!
Cars Washed: 260
Teachers in attendance: Ms. Huber, Mr. Kuykendall, Ms. Parkinson, Mr. Heffernan, Dr. Stephany and more……
Teachers who sold car wash tickets: Ms. Damon, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Cormier, Ms. Kuhn, Mr. Chudy, Ms. Parkinson, Mr. Broughton, Ms. Reichert, Mr. Morales and again, probably other sellers.
The grand total of sales is yet to be determined. We will get back to you on that, but rest assured, it was well into the thousands. After all, most of you bought $50 in tickets as part of your AVID dues in the beginning of the year and then there were additional sales (a couple to a few thousand dollars worth in the past two weeks alone by the aforementioned teachers).
Where does the money go: By far, AVID’s biggest expense (and worth every penny) is to our fabulous tutors. While they individually do not make a lot, they collectively are expensive since they’re here 2 or 3 days a week from 8AM to 2PM.
The money is also used to for teacher tutors in January and June. In addition, it is used for classroom supplies and to defer some costs so that it either does not get passed down to you (after all you already paid for it with your dues and car wash) or so that AVID can pick up some of the cost to make something more affordable for everyone. Some expenses include Taco Man lunch in January, chaperone gift cards to thank teachers who spend their day on an AVID trip, site team lunches, AVID T-shirt (coming next week I believe), teacher conference fees and more.
Bottom line is all of the money goes back to the program! And we teachers really appreciate not having to worry about money the entire year and we can do the things we want to do with the students in and out of the classroom. So, THANK YOU ALL!
Thank you tutors Niccole, Brittany, MJ, Justin, and Study Hut for your help and presence.
Also a special shout out Live for 205 for covering and promoting the AVID Car Wash.
We are proud to announce that next year, we will be offering our first ever Study Hut ACT Group Course.
With the growing popularity of the ACT, we are now offering a course to get your student ready for the test coming next Spring on June 9th. Here are the details:
The course runs April 30th through June 6th.
It meets Monday and Wednesday nights from 7-9 pm (24 hours total)
It includes two full-length practice tests, and assignments catered to your student’s weaknesses.
This course is very similar in structure to our popular small group SAT course, which has been showing excellent improvement in student’s scores across the board. This is NOT a huge classroom or an overwhelming environment. Our SAT and ACT group courses are conducted in a small office, with a maximum of 10 students. Our instructors are young, fresh, smart, and witty, and we all have one thing in common: we know how to dominate both the SAT and the ACT.
Please email rob@studyhut.com or call us at the Hut – (310)-546-2408 to sign up or get any questions answered.
