Help avoid the summer slide and encourage intellectual passion with a summer tutor.
As a teacher and tutor for more than 20 years, I have seen the tremendous benefits that come with giving students individualized attention in summer tutoring situations.
For one, students who are academically idle over the summer weeks and months naturally lose some of what they’d learned during the year. It’s the incremental, subtle improvements that students make that are usually lost first.
“Summer slide” is a well-known phenomenon that teachers during the regular school year battle each fall. No matter the student, without the academic stimulation of the classroom over the summer, students will have difficulty maintaining what they’ve learned during the year.
A school or educational institution with a dedicated tutoring program can help students maintain academic rigor over the summer and keep, if not improve on, the skills and knowledge they’ve learned.
The tutoring environment offers benefits beyond academic maintenance. In an intimate setting, summer tutoring students receive the type of individualized attention that is simply impossible in larger classrooms. As a tutor, I’ve gotten to know my students personally, conversed with them about their interests and goals, and worked on inspiring them to excel. We’ve tackled subjects that they need help on specifically and have approached topics that are difficult for them in new and innovative ways. And we’ve prepared for new material that they’ll encounter in the year ahead — something that’s particularly important as students make the transition to middle or high school or as they prepare for standardized tests.
Summer tutoring gives students a chance to learn in settings that allow for more relaxed learning, approaching academics with an attitude of curious exploration. Learning during the school year is often driven by assignments, deadlines and pressures. While summer tutoring sessions can indeed be intense, they generally are conducted with more of a “fun” atmosphere, making learning more approachable and achievable.
For instance, during summer tutoring, my students are often asked to read a book of their choice that we then discuss and write about. Being able to choose their own reading material (within boundaries, of course) already gives students more investment in their work and interest in pursuing the intellectual and academic questions the reading might raise.
Tutoring provides a front-seat experience for students, fostering a close relationship between student and instructor. In addition, students’ quieter interests can be explored over the summer, something they often don’t have time to do during the school year. Those quieter interests often blossom into something the student truly values — many of my students have even gone on to make those interests and what they’ve done with them the subjects for college application essays.
With younger students, these interests often manifest in extended projects that they take significant interest and pride in. For instance, younger students might work up an extensive report about a sports player they admire, learn the history of origami or write about the differences between styles of horseback riding. All such projects provide ample opportunities for academic study and rigor while furthering students’ own passions.
Among older students, summer passion projects developed in tutoring sessions often provide significant fodder for their later work and careers. Some of my older tutoring students, for instance, have taken the summer to explore studies of the local ecosystem, to contemplate work in a laboratory setting and to investigate the effects of adherence to medication schedules. These types of projects often foreshadow students’ later college majors and career choices.
Some educational institutions, such as the one I work at, offer students a choice between one-on-one and small-group summer tutoring, and both have significant benefits. One-on-one, the student receives all of my attention, and we can often work on reframing habits of thinking academically that aren’t serving them well. In small-group settings, students have a chance to socialize, although not much since the work is still individualized. In small-group settings, I often give students short personalized assignments to work on or think about, and I return to them regularly to discuss their progress.
It’s incredibly rewarding to witness students improve under my gentle coaching and mentorship over the summer. Although I also teach larger classes, tutoring holds a special place for me, a place to bring out the best in students and make them life-long learners and achievers.
Jessica Haile is a senior instructor at Elite Educational Institute, an organization established in 1987 to offer tutoring, academic counseling and alternative education opportunities for students.
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