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How Tutors Support Teachers and Schools

 

“It takes a village.”

This community-style approach to parenting has never been more accurate when describing education.

Teaching children takes more than just one teacher. It’s an entire ecosystem of handlers who help develop and nurture students’ interests and understandings.

While education used to solely rely on the teacher as the end-all, be-all source of learning, that’s no longer sustainable. The pandemic wreaked havoc on student learning. Many students fell at least two years behind due to interrupted learning. 

Not only that, it proved how fragile our school systems are. Our students and teachers continue to show the tremendous impact of the pandemic on their mental health.

Students’ learning, along with their social and emotional well-being, needs consideration. 

School districts are wise to invest in programs that:

  1. Broaden a teacher’s bandwidth
  2. Personalize students’ unique learning needs

If schools continue placing the expectation only on our teachers, the consequences are grave:

Teachers will continue to quit, and learning gaps will only grow in size and stature. Tutoring helps students and teachers meet the rigorous demands of learning objectives.

How tutoring helps students meet classroom learning goals

Simply put: online tutoring services help students learn. The research is astounding. It’s why so many school districts have turned to online tutoring programs to supplement their students’ learning.

In an EdWeek article, “Online Tutoring Can Be Effective, Research Shows,” one study found that three 50-minute sessions for eight weeks helped achievement rates. Students earned “higher standardized test scores and grades, and [students] were less likely to repeat a grade.” Not only that, tutoring helped students with their mental health. Surveyors noticed an improved intrinsic motivation for work completion. Students took more pride in their work completion.

FEV Tutor helps students meet the demands of the classroom through our vetted, proven programs. 

In Baltimore City Schools, an urban district, FEV Tutor helped teachers and administrators realize tremendous growth. The population of BCS is made up of 84% of students from low-income families. In addition, at-risk students make up the majority of the student population.

In partnership with Baltimore County Public School Systems, FEV Tutor helped create more individualized learning by delivering 10,922 live 1:1 Instructional Lessons. This 1:1 instructional support helped lighten teachers’ workloads by adding more teaching resources. In doing so, Baltimore City Schools accelerated Growth on MCAP/PARCC State Assessments.

How tutoring helps teachers feel more supported in doing their jobs

The average class size in the United States is 24 students. We know lower class sizes show a higher achievement rate on standardized tests. With budget cuts and the teacher shortage crisis, there seem to be few solutions to lowering the number of students in a classroom.

As a result, growing class sizes place a lot of unnecessary stress on the teacher, who is only one person addressing the unique learning needs of their students. Unfortunately, this only exacerbates the teacher retention problem.

So how do district leaders mitigate this? 

Online tutoring helps teachers through partnership and collaboration. For example, FEV Tutor reduces teachers’ workloads by meeting with students before, during, and after school whenever it’s most convenient for both teachers and students.

With larger class sizes, it’s next to impossible for the classroom teacher to personalize every student’s learning experience. However, at Dallas Independent School District, classroom teachers felt more empowered to do their job. Katherine Henry, a teacher at Pinkston Collegiate Academy, shared how FEV Tutor helped provide students with “individualized attention and plans to master the standards [students] struggle with.”

Why tutoring matters in today’s education system

The problems we face in education aren’t singular. They’re interconnected. When most of our students struggle with learning objectives, it places more pressure on everyone:

  • the classroom teacher
  • the school administrator
  • the parents

Students feel less confident and start acting out or shutting down. As a result, this perpetuates a disruptive classroom environment. Which then places the teacher in a constant state of behavioral management instead of being the classroom facilitator.

It’s a ripple effect, but it all comes down to whether or not we give our students and our teachers the tools they need to do their jobs.

With so many tutoring services, selecting a program that best suits each school’s needs is essential. Therefore, there are vital considerations to take into account, such as:

  • frequency and size of tutoring sessions
  • educational background and training of tutors
  • specialized subjects based on student profiles
  • data-driven reporting/ESSA compliance

School administrators need to bolster their teachers’ reservoirs if they want to narrow learning gaps and support the teachers who continue choosing to stay. Administrators have the power to make that choice easier now more than ever.