Expressive/Receptive language disorder- turtoring- club Z?

Most tutoring franchises are *not* staffed with people who understand how to work with children with learning disabilities. (Most of them are cashing in on the disasters happening in the schools.) They may, indeed, use “certified teachers” — but most teachers don’t understand how to work with children w/ LD.
Of course, working 1:1, even folks with no training are likely to have some success, and they may have good intuition and learn as they go. However, sometimes it’s not 1:1, and in any event, if they’re presenting material in a “normal” way she’s going to have the same problems that she does with the material in the classroom setting.
And, in general, most parents I”ve heard talka bout their w/ kids with LD have not had the experiences they’d hoped for wtih tutoring franchises.

These types of chain learning centers are not good for kids with learning differences. Look for a program like Lindamood Bell or Wilson or some program designed for kids with phonemic awareness issues and other learning problems.

The chain learning centers are high pressure sales places. It would be easier to go to a used car lot to buy a used car. They are relentless and will say anything they need to to get you to enroll your child and sign huge checks.

I have a bit of knowledge about tutoring centers: I worked for a short while in one of these places — quit when they got onto me about the dress code, wanted stockings in 100F weather, obviously much more concerned about superficial appearances than about actual teaching and learning. I applied to teach in another and when visiting, it was even worse. I went to visit another in another city — was called and offered a job, so I thought, turns out that as a private tutor I was competition and they wanted to undercut me by getting me under their low-paid system.

What I am describing here is my own personal experience and there may be places out there doing better; I would be happy to see them.

Basically the standard in most centers is *not* one to one, it’s one to three. Each teacher is assigned three students and while some effort is made to keep the same tutor with the same kids and maybe a group of kids on the same topic, it is not at all guaranteed.
A large number of teachers and students are in one room with flimsy partitions, very noisy and fatiguing to those of us with sound sensitivity; and then my smell sensitivity, one bathroom for fifty people and they tried to cover it up with a perfume plug-in, even worse.
Two of the centers including the one I worked in were copy-and-correct paper-shuffling systems; you copy a workbook page, hand it to the kid, same for the other two, when a kid finishes you hand them another copy page for the same topic and correct the first and hand it back; once they get over 80% correct on three pages on the topic you move up to the next topic on the list, and so on.
The third center I saw followed the government approved textbooks to the letter and didn’t want to go outside of the box; they were most interested in knowing whether I knew the curriculum upside down and backwards, not in whether I knew the subject or could teach it.
This extra paractice can do some good for a child who simply doesn’t have effective teaching in the school or who missed out on some foundations and needs to go over them.
For someone who really doesn’t understand. there is no real teaching in most of these centers. Again, there *may* be some exceptions — look around.

Commercial centers have an amazing cash cow. The one I worked in around 1997 or so (raise prices by 10% or more for now?) paid new teachers only $8. per hour and experienced teachers $10. They assigned three students to each teacher, and charged parents $35. per hour. Even assuming some kids were absent and some solo for special tutoriing, say an average of two kids per teacher, this still means $70. per hour in and $10. per hour out, leaving $60. per hour *per teacher* and there were six to ten teachers at a time for $360 to $600 per hour for the administration. Yes, there is overhead of rent, and administrator’s wages, and a *huge* advertising budget, but they were still pulling a pretty profit, and I’d like to know what the administrator’s wages were …

Yes, the do hire “qualified teachers”. That means in the area of Maryland that I was in, a retired NASA engineer who knew everything in the world about math and science could *not* be hired because he didn’t have an education diploma; but a recent totally inexperienced graduate (I use the word loosely) whose own literacy was not up to standard, from a bottom-rated teacher’s college, was welcome as qualified.

Teachers who work in such commercial centers are usually either young people who haven’t landed a first job or fairly young teachers moonlighting for a few extra dollars to fill in the budget. Turnover is high, experience is low, and dedication to the job is near zero.

Yes, there *may* be exceptions — go to your local place, observe for a few hours watching for what is really going on, and talk to some former clients before you put in your money.

Thanks for all your replies.
This tutoring franchise offers 1 on 1 in your own home.
They purport to be able to handling learning disabilities.
I’m very willing to look into other things that might be more appropriate but I don’t know where to look. I live in southeastern MA- any suggestions?

Sounds like they’re trying to target a different market (could be the word’s out about general franchises) — and hey, it is MA. I’d ask just what they do to deal with the LD stuff — how experienced their teachers are; you might ask what they do about NVLD or Asperger’s just as a vocabulary test. THey should be prepared to talk about those kinds of things.
I could certainly imagine someone deciding this was a viable market and getting some truly qualified tutors together (especially given the number of frustrated, qualified teachers). Takes a combination of good skills and good biz management… might be what you have there.

One to one in your own home is a whole different ball-game from tutoring centers.
This is what I do, and a lot of my students do very very well.

You have to interview the actual tutor, not the administrator in the office (unless as in my case they are one and the same.) You have to find out what the tutor’s knowledge of the subject is, how much experience they have teaching, and how they adapt to the individual student.

If the teacher refuses to promise exact progress, this is *good* — this means they want to find out where the student is and work with the facts, not some pre-made one-size program.

If the teacher says they will use various books and methods and design individual lessons according to need, this is *good* — it means they are flexible enough to work with your child’s LD.

You want to make sure that the tutor is knowledgeable about scientific research in reading and math and uses research-based methods.
Brand names are not important; what matters is the teacher’s approach. A bad teacher can teach OG badly and a good teacher can teach multisensory synthetic phonics from handmade cards without a brand name box, so spend some time asking and be sure the teacher knows the methods and philosophy.

This is going to cost you a lot; as I tell my clients, I have to pay the mortgage too, not to count the car and gas to go to them. Make sure you get a good person, and then work *with* them.

I have some clients who drop off just as we are meeting success and reaching breakthroughs. From what I can gather, they see the child starting to succeed and they want more and faster so they go to someone else who promises overnight miracles. Those apparent miracles are of course built on the months or years of hard work I’ve put in on foundations, and then the child will stall on the next steps because new foundations haven’t been built.
Once you get a good teacher and y

(My computer is acting up — previous message continued/concluded)

Once you get a good tutor and your child starts to show slow but steady progress — *some* progress should be visible within the first ten hours and often sooner — stick with the plan. Don’t jump around after miracle cures, and don’t keep changing what you want the tutor to do.