Tutoring Clubs for School Subjects and SAT/ACT Prep
What is a tutoring Club? A tutoring club is where serious students gather to get their work done AND have a tutor’s expertise when they are stuck.
Some tutoring clubs are more pro-active – they enlist a tutor to teach a certain agenda from scratch, or review a certain subject.
High School tutoring clubs allow students to get help with difficult academic work, with semi-academic work, and with standardized test prep.
Tutoring clubs often include AP prep in the spring, helping each participant to earn a 4 or 5 on the AP Test. Tutoring clubs help when there is a particularly daunting subject, or there’s a classroom teacher who is not addressing the subject well.
Tutoring clubs can continue into the summer. Students doing ACT or SAT prep can keep their club intact and meet at a library or at a home to work on SAT/ACT subjects.
What are the benefits of a tutoring club? Tutoring clubs help students do their assignments in an organized way. After an afternoon in a tutoring club, many students have completed their whole set of assignments, they take no work home. They help students get through tough papers and study effectively for tests.
A tutoring club can help students who need conformity. Students lacking structure can follow other students who log into the right sites and follow assignments to submit work the way a teacher demands. Students in a tutoring club rely less on their parents or older siblings.
A tutoring club can bring in a professional tutor. Some clubs will bring in a tutor each day, some will enlist a tutor just once or twice a week. Families pay for the tutor’s time, but it is split. Thus a 15 student tutoring club means parents pay just 7% of the cost of a tutor. Some students will use the tutor more and some will use the tutor less. The tutor decides when time is best spent one-on-one with a student, or with a small pod of students who are working on the same assignment and having similar difficulties. Having a 5 hours-a-week tutor (2.5 hours x 2 days) in a 15 – 20 student group costs each parent $250 – $550 per semester.
How do we set up a tutoring club at our school? If a school does not have a tutoring club, a few students can start one. They enlist a faculty adviser. Schools all have after-school space, and most will allow use so long as the custodians can do their work and the students clean the space after they leave.
Once a club’s formation is under way, the adviser or a student or a parent can shop for professional tutors. Many companies offer their tutors to come to a school on a regular basis. Parents can choose to pay for their share of the tutor through the group or directly with the company.
If your school already has a tutoring club, consider Ivy Bound. Ivy Bound has a bevy of tutors available after school. Where the school has an excellent teacher willing to do the extra sessions but needing a curriculum, Ivy Bound can provide a loose or tight curriculum for adept teachers and students to follow.
For the SAT/ACT prep, a tutoring club can create a “Form Your Own” class. They set the schedule they desire, set times to meet for teaching, for practice testing, and for reviewing tests. Students who want more of a tutor’s time can easily enlist the same tutor who teaches in a group to hold extra sessions privately.
