OVERVIEW:
This month FEV Tutor is proud to profile our partnership with Santa Ana Unified School District in sunny Southern California!
In Early December FEV Tutor and Santa Ana administrators worked together to launch a virtual tutoring program to support five of the district's Intermediate Schools. FEV is tutoring students during the school day, after school as part of an Extended Learning Program, and at home on evenings and weekends for identified SAUSD students.
We are especially excited to share details of this partnership, as Santa Ana USD offers an innovative and forward thinking approach to personalized learning.
THE ADVANCED LEARNING ACADEMY:
The Advanced Learning Academy (ALA) is one of the five SAUSD schools FEV Tutor is working with. ALA is a a competency-based dependent charter school formed in partnership with the University of California at Irvine, Stanford University’s SCALE Project, the Buck Institute, and Gooru Learning.
Personalized Learning:
The Advanced Learning Academy embodies personalized learning by empowering students to accelerate at their own pace through curriculum while working through meaningful, hands-on projects and receiving 1-on-1 mentoring from SAUSD teachers. Each student has access to learning 24 hours a day through their own technology.
Students at the Advanced Learning Academy working on Math with their 1:1 Virtual Tutor.
Partnership with FEV Tutor:
ALA is a collaborative tech-focused learning environment where students act as self-advocates within a self-paced instructional model. As such, the District saw value in partnering with FEV Tutor to offer students another resource as part of their-self-paced personalized learning experience.
Students are encouraged to seek 1-on-1 help when they need it through a built in tiered self-advocacy intervention structure. If they are stuck or in need of assistance within any of their English, Math, Social Studies, or Science courses students can access their tutors during their Flex Learning Period, from home, or during any of their classes. Since ALA students have access to technology 24 hours a day they can count on FEV's tutors to be available around the clock to support their learning.
According to Michelle Rodriguez, the Assistant Superintendent of K-12 Teaching & Learning at Santa Ana USD:
"At Santa Ana Unified, we are committed to building student agency and students' meta-cognitive capacities to be lifelong learners in a Global Society. FEV Tutor will be one tool that our students will use as they are empowered to take ownership over their learning, become a resource to others, and learn within a personalized, self organized learning environment that accelerates learning."
The Launch:
FEV visited the Advanced Learning Academy in early December to provide a controlled launch to introduce our live, virtual tutoring services to administrators, teachers, and to students.
During our implementation, Education Program Managers met with district administration to collect necessary data and curriculum resources to develop Personalized Tutoring Plans for each student enrolled in the tutoring program. Personalized Tutoring plans are entirely adaptive and dynamic as we respond to changing student needs over the course of the school year.
While on-site, FEV's Education Program Manager joined Advanced Learning Academy Math classes to introduce students to our virtual whiteboard and to teach best practices when communicating with an online tutor. Students became familiar with the whiteboard tools and functionality as they collaborate with their individual tutors to master targeted learning objectives.
After the controlled launch to set students up for success, ALA students and teachers now determine how to utilize FEV's live, 1-to-1 Virtual Tutoring Services to guide students on their path to proficiency across all core subjects. The virtual tutoring program is off to a fantastic start:
- Groups of students are logging into tutoring sessions at the same time as part of a rotational model of instruction with daily directions from their teacher connecting the 1-on-1 tutoring to the concepts and skills being taught at other related stations in the room.
- Individual students are requesting On-Demand tutoring sessions during the school day and on evenings to access point of need tutoring support.
- Students are rating their tutoring sessions an average of 4.81 out of 5.00 possible points and rating their tutors an average of 4.76 out of 5.00 possible points.
SANTA ANA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS
In addition to working with the Advanced Leadership Academy, FEV Tutor also provides virtual tutoring as part of an Extended Learning Program to students from four additional SAUSD Intermediate Schools: Lathrop IS, MacArthur IS, McFadden IS, and Mendez IS.
Similar to the Advanced Learning Academy, this program will make virtual tutoring available to students both during an Extended Learning After School Program and On-Demand at night or on the weekend. SAUSD administrators wanted to make sure that only students that were the most in need received free tutoring through the district, so together FEV Tutor and SAUSD developed Student and Staff Tutor Guides to determine which students are eligible to receive FEV's tutoring. Guides combine MAP data, grades, and teacher input to help identify students most in need of tutoring.
Additionally, FEV Tutor will use the data collected to create the Student and Staff Tutor Guides to create Personalized Tutoring Plans for each student enrolled in the program. Tutoring was launched the first week of December, starting with 8th Grade Math students. FEV Tutor was on-site again for this launch to help coach students on best practices of working with a virtual tutor and to help familiarize students and teachers with the virtual whiteboard.
Goals
The overall goal of the SAUSD virtual tutoring program is to provide students an additional resource to further personalize their learning to achieve their academic goals. In addition, SAUSD hopes to help intermediate students achieve the following through FEV's live, 1-to-1 virtual tutoring services:
- Hone successful habits, act as self-advocates, and become high-level critical-thinkers while collaborating one-on-one with their live tutors.
- Develop 21st Century digital communication skills on their path to becoming Good Communicators.
- Achieve mastery on their own set of targeted objectives according to their personalized learning plans and proceed at their own pace according to their competency-based modules.
STAY TUNED!
We can't wait to see how this unique program continues to expand! Be sure to check back in later in the semester to see a thorough analysis of student usage and the impact on achievement.
INTERESTED IN OFFERING VIRTUAL TUTORING AT YOUR SCHOOL?
Are you wondering how you can launch a live, 1-to-1 virtual tutoring program to support personalized learning at your school? Speak with one of our Education Consultants to learn how:
