Report Card Blues : Struggling Students May Need a Tutor or Special Help for a Learning Disability
Students, it’s time to get serious. Summer suntans have faded, back-to-school days are over and something big is just around the corner: your first report card.
During the next week or two, many San Fernando Valley public schools will send home that time-honored measure of scholastic success or slippage. For some students the news will be good, but others will face the music of several weeks spent goofing off, or of grappling alone with the mumbo jumbo of calculus.
If the results are a shock--both to students and their parents--a less-than-stellar performance can also be a call to action, a chance to turn things around by looking for help in the right places.
“The first response to a bad report card can set the tone for the whole year,” says Suzette Rosso, a counselor at Canoga Park High School.
That response might take various forms, depending on the student’s age, the nature of the problem and the school, among other factors. But Rosso, along with other educators, advises parents that Step 1 is to get involved and contact their children’s teachers.
Carolyn Ellner, dean of the school of education at Cal State Northridge, agrees. “The teacher is the first line of defense,” she said. “The teacher coordinates the child’s learning program and, in many cases, is with the child longer during the day than the parent is.”
Ellner stresses the need for a thorough evaluation of the student and the problem before seeking help through remedial or tutorial programs. “A bad report card could be a symptom of something else--a physiological problem, for example, trouble with eyesight or slow maturation,” she said.
In Rosso’s experience, most instances of unsatisfactory academic performance are caused by poor work habits or irregular attendance, both of which can respond to closer monitoring by teachers, counselors, parents and children.
For the more involved difficulties of students who don’t understand their course material, Rosso describes a panoply of solutions ranging from switching to a lower-level class, to seeking help from teachers and fellow students, to being tested for a learning disability and enrolling in special-education classes. Such classes are available to all Los Angeles Unified School District students who qualify via district testing.
On-campus tutoring options vary widely and may be subject to the vicissitudes of the district’s budget, which has been cut by more than $650 million since 1988. Last year, for example, Canoga Park High was able to offer only one semester of after-school tutoring by teachers before funding dried up. By mid-September this year, Mary Ann Laccabue, director of the program, said that she was in the process of recruiting teachers to participate, although the program’s future remains up in the air.
Marcia Gould, a counselor who runs a similar effort at El Camino Real High in Woodland Hills, said her school’s program started up this week. She added that a number of the school’s teachers are willing to tutor students for free.
One such teacher is Lou Cortez of the Spanish department, who is available to help students before and after school and during lunch.
“I do it for the same reason I’m a teacher,” he said, “for the kids.”
Some schools supplement remedial help from instructors with peer tutoring, a practice that proved more effective for Dean Turner, a 15-year-old sophomore at Agoura High, than assistance from his teacher or parents. “My teacher didn’t explain things well,” said Dean, recalling a pre-algebra class during his freshman year. “And my parents didn’t understand what I was learning.” Several fellow students, who coached him for extra class credit, were more effective, he said, because “they were my age and I felt they could understand me a lot better--and see why I didn’t understand.”
Students who do the tutoring say the rewards go both ways. Lori Siff, 17, an El Camino Real senior and honor student, last year began helping peers unravel the mysteries of algebra I, algebra II and trigonometry. She is continuing the tutoring this year.
“It’s good for me too,” she said. “It refreshes my memory. Sometimes a problem will make more sense the second time around.”
Previously, the LAUSD maintained an office that recruited and trained tutors at the junior and senior high level, and also kept a list of credentialed teachers who could provide one-on-one assistance in a range of subjects for all grade levels. According to Sandra Johns, current coordinator of the Volunteer Tutorial and DOVES (Dedicated Older Volunteers in Educational Services) Program, the tutorial aspect was dropped 10 years ago because of budget reductions, and the tutors referral list was phased out in 1990 for the same reason.
Today, the office’s primary function is to train and place volunteers--mostly parents and senior citizens--to assist public school staff. Occasionally, Johns said, volunteers do some tutoring--and, indeed, the office continues to provide a booklet called “Tutoring Tips”--but they more commonly work as teachers’ aides, library helpers and playground supervisors, mostly at elementary schools.
“It’s a voluntary rather than a mandated program,” Johns said, “so not all schools have volunteers. What it takes is a school-site administrator who believes in the need.”
Sandra Argast, principal of Woodland Hills Elementary School, is a true believer in volunteers. About 100 contribute time at Argast’s school, and their tasks sometimes include drilling individual students in basic skills, such as reading and vocabulary.
Although it pays to explore remedial options on campus before resorting to outside programs or tutoring, some problems require extra attention that schools can’t provide.
Local colleges and universities are good sources for tutors in most subjects and at any level. Fees can range from about $10 per hour for student tutors to $30 or $40 for a teacher with advanced credentials.
Cal State Northridge has a job board outside the career center in its administration building where notices requesting and offering one-on-one help at negotiable fees are posted. (To request a tutor, call 818-885-2385. For information, call 818-885-2887.)
Pierce College subscribes to a low-cost computerized job listing service called Jobtrak, which takes employer request information over the phone and transmits it to college job boards. (To find a Pierce tutor through Jobtrak, call 818-995-3377.)
In addition, individual academic departments often maintain lists of private tutors--from current students to part-time faculty members--that they will mail upon request.
Both CSUN and Pierce offer further remedial options on their campuses. CSUN’s Reading Clinic, staffed by some of the teachers enrolled in the school’s masters in education program, helps students from grades 3 through 12 who are having reading difficulties. For $150 per semester, with partial scholarships available, students are tutored in pairs for twelve one-hour weekly sessions. (For information, call 818-885-3333.)
Another CSUN training program, the Language, Speech and Hearing Clinic (818-885-2856), provides speech pathology services at a cost of $175 per semester (plus a $100 evaluation fee) for selected children with articulatory or language-based disorders.
Pierce offers a number of remedial and enrichment courses to children ages 6 to 15 through its Community Education Program. The classes, in such subjects as reading, math, handwriting improvement and study skills, involve 12 to 15 students in three- or six-week sessions and are run by elementary school teachers.
Larry Smith, 11, of Woodland Hills, who attended a summer math workshop at Pierce with his 9-year-old sister, Quintella, said he went because he “needed help and sometimes got bad grades.” After several enjoyable weeks spent “learning in the form of games,” he said that his math grades went from C’s to A’s.
Pierce also features a “Success in School” course for parents who wish to help their children become better students. Prices for academic offerings are in the $20 to $25 range. (For a current calendar of courses, call 818-719-6425.)
Another low-cost source of academic help is the Pacoima-based Boys and Girls Club of San Fernando Valley (818-896-5261), which runs a drop-in tutoring program--Homework Helpers--and also offers tutoring by appointment. Open at no cost to all club members (children ages 7 to 17 who have filled out membership forms and paid a $12 annual fee, which may be waived), the programs are operated by three college students who assist children in a variety of subjects.
Rudolfo Hillen, the club’s computer/educational director, said most requests for help involve reading difficulties. “The area’s schools have high student populations and a low number of teachers,” he said. “A lot of kids are slipping through the cracks.”
Hillen added that many Latino club members have learned English as a second language and face “problems with the transition, especially kids who might not have gotten a good reading foundation in their first language.”
Teresa Reed, a Northridge mother of two originally from Colombia, began sending her son Adrian, 7, to the Homework Helpers program because “I couldn’t afford special tutoring and I could see he wasn’t learning in school.” Reed is enthusiastic about the results, both for Adrian and her daughter Jasmina, 9--a student at a Northridge magnet school who receives tutoring help to cope with her large volume of homework. “I’m a poor woman,” Reed said, “but if I had money, I’d give it to that club.”
Other Valley students may find that help is as close as their television set. Monday through Thursday, from 3:30 to 6 p.m., Channel 58, the school district’s own network, presents Homework Hotline, a show that is now in re-runs but has teachers manning its telephones to answer questions from viewers. The show will start up again in live format in December.
As Doris Humphrey, one of the program’s teachers, explained it, the live Homework Hotline will feature two math and two English instructors every day, each conducting a 15-minute problem-solving segment based on questions from callers. There also will be a two-way audio setup for addressing particular questions on the air.
Humphrey said most Valley cable companies carry Channel 58, and that it is also accessible without cable in some areas. (The Homework Hotline number to call, once the live show resumes, will be 1-800-LA STUDY.)
Channel 58 airs an array of instructional programs, including Video Algebra, a one-year Algebra I course in 64 lessons--also available for checkout from some high school libraries--and Video Math, 93 half-hours of ninth-grade math--similarly available through local junior high schools. (For a Channel 58 programming guide, call 213-625-6958.)
Parents, of course, can be a source of help for their children too, as Woodland Hills homemaker Deeann Savage discovered.
Savage describes an intensive two-year involvement with her daughter Kyla Poehlmann’s educational program--”Both of us worked together and worked closely with (Woodland Hills Elementary School)--all of us a team--” to address Kyla’s learning disability, which surfaced in the wake of her parents’ divorce.
Special education classes, private tutoring and coaching from Savage resulted in Kyla’s grades improving significantly, along with her self-esteem and enjoyment of school.
“She was very motivated,” said Savage, “but I had to notice the problem. If I hadn’t, she wouldn’t have had help--at least not as early as she did.”
