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Amarillo Library's free online tutoring
Minds Matter volunteers give students a boost toward college with tutoring, mentoring
Washington U. student's idea on tutoring has gone national

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Amarillo Library's free online tutoring

Posted: 06 Apr 2010 07:00 PM PDT

"Help Now" by Brainfuse, a free online, real-time, one-on-one tutoring service

By Billy Loftin
Tuesday, April 06, 2010 at 8:54 p.m.

AMARILLO, TEXAS -- We recently told you about Tutor.com, an online tutoring service that provides one-on-one real-time tutoring, but the Amarillo area has access to a similar resource, and it's free. The Amarillo Public Library and Harrington Library Consortium provide "Help Now" by Brainfuse.

"Help Now" by Brainfuse is an online tutoring service, which also offers real-time, one-on-one tutoring services in various grade levels and subjects. It even includes foreign language, and GED services.

The online tutors are part of a national network of education professionals, former or present teachers, and graduate students.

The main difference between the Amarillo Library's "Help Now" and Tutor.com is the price.

"They're the same type service, they're comparable. Tutor.com is a good company, but our service isn't a dollar a minute, it's free for all of our card holders in the Panhandle," said Melody Boren, Technology Services Librarian. Some estimate that a professional tutor could run $25 to $75 per hour or more for face-to-face tutoring.

The Amarillo Library's "Help Now" service also features a 24-hour writing lab, so students can prepare for essays. They can get a critique of their essay back within 24-hours.

The tutoring service is really designed to help library patrons with education, life skills, and self-improvement.

"It might give you a new lease on the math career, the science career, if you've given up in class, this might be another way to open that subject up for students," said Boren.

For more information, check out the links provided below.

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Minds Matter volunteers give students a boost toward college with tutoring, mentoring

Posted: 07 Apr 2010 01:17 AM PDT

By Edith Starzyk, The Plain Dealer

April 07, 2010, 4:03AM

Lonnie Timmons III, The Plain DealerLona Ruot, left, a Minds Matter mentor, shows John Hay High School junior Kezia Reynolds some photographs from a rock-climbing fundraiser. The nonprofit group has a goal of raising $100,000 this school year. Sherwin-Williams Co. chipped in $50,000, and an event with local executives and community leaders is planned for June 2. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Picture what a Saturday means for a teenager or person in their 20s. A chance to sleep in, chill, maybe hang out with friends.

Now picture the teen giving that up for an extra day of school, and the 20-something exchanging it to serve as a tutor and mentor.

That's what happens every Saturday during the school year with the high school students and young professionals who are part of Minds Matter.

The Cleveland nonprofit, now in its second year, has already earned recognition for the thousands of hours volunteered so far. Fifteen members received Presidential Service Awards from President Obama last year.

But the 60 volunteers and 23 high school sophomores and juniors have their sights set on a bigger goal: having every student who completes the three-year program go on to a college or university.

"We're here to give kids who are really bright a chance they wouldn't have otherwise," said Michael Lagoni, founder and president of the Cleveland chapter of Minds Matter.

"We help them improve their grades, help them improve their SAT scores and give them the experience of college through some great summer programs."

Lagoni, a graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College, heard about Minds Matter when he lived in Boston and decided to start a chapter when he moved back to this area. Since being launched in New York City in 1991, the organization had expanded to Chicago, Denver and Portland, Ore., as well as Boston.

Lagoni, who runs his own software company, knocked on the doors of a lot of schools., ultimately getting buy-in from John Hay, Rhodes, MC Stem, St. Martin de Porres and Berea high schools.

Faculty members nominate kids who are smart and willing to work hard but come from low-income families where college is more a dream than an expectation.

Those who apply and are accepted spend five hours every Saturday in downtown conference rooms supplied by the Sherwin-Williams Co.

There they get an extra push to excel through intensive lessons in math, writing and critical thinking. They also prepare for college entrance exams with instructors from Kaplan who give Minds Matter a deep discount. And they work on lining up spots in summer programs at colleges across the country.

Each student's progress is charted on a board for all to see, and small rewards are given as landmarks are reached.

Tadar Muhammad, a junior in John Hay's architecture and design program, used his sharpened writing skills to produce an essay that placed in the top 1 percent of 140,000 submissions to the Alliance for Young Writers and Artists.

Tadar attended a program at Georgetown University last summer, while his John Hay classmate Isa Hammad went to Johns Hopkins University.

The summer experience not only will look good on college applications but also provides a taste of what university life is like. Minds Matter helps the students figure out what programs to apply to, guides them in putting together the application and uses donations to pay costs that aren't covered by financial aid.

"It was unbelievably great to get a chance to live on campus," Isa said. "I'm normally a heavy sleeper but I would wake up as soon as I heard the alarm and get ready for class."

Isa added that his Minds Matter lessons primed him for the high-level academics. "Everyone wants to do their best here. No one's slacking off."

Isa also gives credit to his mentors, Jon Briggs and Kevin Stone, both of whom work at KeyBank. "They're like my big brothers. We talk all the time, and they keep track of how I'm doing with my schoolwork."

The word about Minds Matter has spread from friend to friend, bringing in volunteers from age 22 to 30 who work at about 30 companies in Northeast Ohio.

Briggs acknowledged mentoring is a big commitment but said he likes giving more than a check to a good cause.

"The results of what you're doing are very tangible," he said. "And still being young yourself helps you understand what's going on with them."

On the other hand, dealing with a teenager sometimes feel like "a crash course in parenting," added Briggs, who is 25. "Some days you want to pull your hair out, and others it's like 'Wow, I'm actually impacting a kid's life. He is going to succeed.' "

E-mail cleveland@mindsmatter.org to contact the group.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: estarzyk@plaind.com, 216-999-4881

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Washington U. student's idea on tutoring has gone national

Posted: 07 Apr 2010 01:19 AM PDT

ST. LOUIS — At a coffee shop near Washington University, Sunny Varshney buried into homework. But the biomedical engineering senior wasn't working alone. He was tutoring a high school senior in chemistry and trigonometry.

"We talked about this in class," she said, "but I didn't get it."

"OK, we're talking about catalysts and activation energy," Varshney responded, writing out equations on a note pad. "For any reaction, you can draw the reaction coordinates, right?"

Varshney is one of 75 college students and recent graduates in the St. Louis area testing a different approach to tutoring.

It's a concept developed three years ago by a 21-year-old student who was willing to bet that his classmates would make effective and affordable learning coaches for high school students.

That student, Charles Cohn, said, "I realized that my friends would be the perfect tutors — effective communicators, brilliant and fun to be around."

So Cohn, a Washington University student at the time, hired five of his college friends and launched Varsity Tutors.

Since then, the company has grown to include 350 tutors nationwide in Chicago, Phoenix, Houston and Tucson. The company hires professional tutors for its elementary and middle school customers, but Cohn estimates that two-thirds of the company's tutors are in college or graduate school.

In Chicago, the company goes after top talent from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. In Houston, many tutors come from Rice University.

"It's easy to find brilliant people interested in tutoring who would make amazing tutors on college campuses," Cohn said. "So we spend lots of time recruiting on these campuses."

The hiring process is the same in every location — after submitting an application, prospective tutors are interviewed to make sure they're not only smart, Cohn says, but approachable.

"We've turned down people with perfect test scores because they don't have the communication skills or they aren't personable," Cohn said. "They need to know how to break down concepts and know how to make conversation."

Varshney signed up with Varsity Tutors, in part, because he views tutoring as great practice for his future. "I want to go into education, possibly on the faculty of a medical school," he said. "I also like helping people who are struggling."

Varsity Tutors works with little overhead. For the most part, the tutors communicated through a network of their own smart phones. Text messages are used to dispatch tutors to the next assignment and to schedule appointments. Parents can buy sessions and request tutors online.

Cohn says an hour of tutoring from his company costs about $48 in St. Louis. He said that because the company doesn't have a marketing budget, most of its clients come from referrals.

Private tutoring has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade. By one estimate, the industry grew from 250,000 tutors in 1998 to over 1 million in 2003. And the industry has adapted as it has grown. In addition to the traditional professional tutoring centers, consumers now can subscribe to online video tutoring sites or use a referral service that matches tutors with students based on the customer's needs.

Critics contend that one of the problems with private tutoring services is the lack of standards and regulations. Jennifer Hurd, president of the Association for the Tutoring Profession, says unlike schools and other education providers, many tutoring services do not go through an accreditation process. She envisions a system where customers can verify their tutor's qualifications through an independent body.

But Cohn disagrees and says that accreditation is not as important as teaching skill. He cites his own experiences as proof.

"Everybody has been taught by some amazing teachers in high school, as well as some terrible ones," he said. "They all had teaching certificates. The ability to explain difficult concepts in an easy to understand manner — a key attribute we seek in our tutors — isn't guaranteed by professional credentialing."

Cohn also points to the success that Varsity Tutors has had and its popularity with parents, who recommend the service to others.

At the coffee shop tutoring session, Varshney and his student went through her homework, step by step.

After working through chemistry, Varshney moved on to trigonometry equations. He drew isosceles triangles on a note pad, labeling each side as she took notes. The two then graphed the problem.

"So you want to meet again on Thursday?" he asked.

"Sure," she said.

And by the time they left, both had plugged the appointment into their smart phones.

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Tutoring

Wednesday, April 7, 2010