If you’re a parent with a struggling student, you know the frustration all too well. Whether your son or daughter is trying to get an academic scholarship, pull up their GPA to a 2.0 so they can participate in sports next semester, or avoid being held back, having a child struggle academically can be very stressful for children and parents alike.

Frank Milner, the President of Tutor Doctor, has two kids of his own, and he had “such different experiences” with them academically. “My son is very independent and exceptionally bright – low maintenance in terms of education. But the experience with my daughter was very different. She struggled with math and she’d have these terrible math meltdowns, which put a lot of stress on us as parents, particularly her mom,” says Frank.

It wasn’t until the Milners got a tutor that everything changed. “Having that person come in with that arm’s length relationship changed the whole dynamic,” he says. After tutoring, Frank’s daughter went on to get great grades, the Dean’s honour’s list, and be very successful with her college education.

Our Education Systems Are Struggling 

Our education systems are struggling, and it’s consistent around the world. We see similar issues in many of the countries we operate in. “It’s a tough thing for leaders to get right and as a result, we end up in situations where school systems are trying every day to do more with less, and there’s something wrong with that equation,” he says.

“Trying to do more with less often doesn’t equal success, and it’s the students that end up getting the shorter end of the stick having to deal with teachers who are stretched thinner and thinner, and class sizes that are getting bigger and bigger – students getting less individual attention, which they desperately need. That’s why we focus on the one-to-one tutoring model – their need for individual attention that’s been lost in our classrooms today.

Tutor Doctor’s One-to-One Tutoring Model

When a student is struggling, they’re not going home and telling Mom and Dad. They’re struggling in silence, and it shows up in other places, such as their behaviour. Sometimes, it takes a while for parents to realize what’s going on, and why their kid is acting out. They’re not putting up their hands in the classroom, not asking for help, just retreating into themselves, he says.

When Tutor Doctor arrives on the scene, amazing things start to happen. “We have the ability to hone in on the root cause of the problem. Instead of dealing with symptoms in 10th grade calculus for example, the child actually missed some lesson in the sixth or seventh grade that’s followed him in his math experience.” That’s why he’s struggling today, he explained.

Tutor Doctor tutors sit one-to-one with students to figure out the root cause, to fill in the missing blocks of knowledge. By shoring up the foundational elements, all of a sudden things crystalize as far as what’s going on today in the classroom. Students have these “aha” moments, but it doesn’t happen in the group environment, it happens in the one-to-one model, he says.

“We help students make those connections, build a solid foundation, and consolidate what they are on currently so they understand what’s going on today.” The goal, he says, is to work ahead of the curriculum, to introduce concepts so when they are introduced in class, students are ahead of the curve. “That’s the opportunity that exists with one-to-one education, and that is why students take such massive leaps.”

Benefits of One-To-One Tutoring with Tutor Doctor

• Individualized attention: Working directly with the student as opposed to being in a group atmosphere.
• Adjusting to the changing needs of the student: The one-to-one model allows us to make pivots from session to session as tutoring progresses.
• Focused attention: Dealing with the root cause of the problem as well as the current one.
• Flexibility: The flexibility of our model is a big advantage because in a typical learning center, there is a group of three or four students working on the center’s curriculum. Instead, we work with the student’s actual curriculum. It allows us to deal with the issues the child is facing head-on instead of using another curriculum. 

According to Frank, one of the advantages of our program is that we introduce an element which we refer to as X-Skills Development, a strategic guide to executing tasks effectively, sustaining high performance and reaching academic and personal goals. It helps students prioritize, manage their time, think critically, and make decisions.

Frank wants parents to know that our kids need help and it doesn’t matter if it’s an A student or a struggling student, which is something that’s been quite a surprise to him – the number of A students that we actually help. It’s getting more and more competitive out there. More students are competing for fewer spots and as a result, they are feeling a tremendous amount of stress as they get into high school and head off into college.

“Getting them extra help goes far in alleviating that stress and anxiety. By doing that, we give students a much better chance of not just getting into college, but the college for their choice and the program of their choice. It used to be that getting an A was enough. That is not true in today’s world, so tutoring is for everyone. It’s tremendously helpful to students no matter where they are in the education spectrum. It will benefit them today and in their future lives and their future careers.”