Local teacher starts tutoring service

A Woy Woy high school teacher, who has taught high school English and HSIE subjects for more than 16 years, has started a tutoring service in Woy Woy.

Ms Karen Cormie has started Cycles in Tuition as a mobile service providing face-to-face tuition.

She said that tutoring was often required when children had developed anti-school attitutdes.

"Online tuition is not the best way to help children overcome anti-school attitudes," she said.

"A certain subject, a particular teacher or simply 'the rules' can cause anti-school attitudes to fester in children.

"It's hard for many students to have respect for authority figures and rules when they themselves live outside the social norm," Ms Cormie said.

"Students can hold these anti-school attitudes for myriad reasons: a dysfunctional home life; genetic inheritance; social awkwardness; or minority group characteristics.

"Whatever the reason, some students define themselves as outsiders to the school system.

"Many of these students come from broken homes and many still live with household disruption and tension, so they can feel quite isolated and alienated from formal education.

"Just look at the prevalence of divorce in our society.

"Often it takes years of fighting at home before a couple decide to split and all that turmoil is bound to have an effect on the individual student.

"Coupled with that are the individual's own characteristics.

"For many who identify as belonging to certain minorities, then often face the ridicule of others at a time when peer acceptance is so crucial."

According to Ms Cormie, such reasons, often then create a defensiveness which is expressed predominately at school but is also expressed generally in society.

"In the classroom it is usually expressed either as passive resistance or even malicious obedience (doing the bare minimum of work to scrape by) or via overt challenges to the teacher.

"This resistance is not only ultimately destructive for the student and disruptive in the classroom, but is unnecessary since it fails to achieve what any student really wants: acceptance and achievement."

Tutoring provided an environment where the student was not exposed to anyone other than the tutor, she said.

"There is no audience of peers to show off to or to be embarrassed in-front of, and learning difficulties and resistance can be overcome much more effectively and quickly.

"Every student tutored has a voice which obviously supports an enhanced self-esteem as it develops student skills and knowledge.

"The difficulty with online tutoring programs is that they have standard formats and the student's verbal contributions go unheard, so no tutor-student rapport is established.

"The most successful users of online tutoring programs will be students who already possess a pro-education attitude."

The problem is that many students who are in most need of tutoring don't have such attitudes.

"Whether they simply can't get certain subject content or resent the entire schooling process, they are often unable to benefit from online tuition.

"For these students, the subject content needs to become personally accessible and relevant to them and their future life."

Ms Cormie said a positive student-tutor relationship was extremely beneficial for greater skills and knowledge, which led to improved performance and enthusiasm.

"Students subjected to standardised online tutoring programs, often perceive them as remedial and punitive.

"This only reinforces any negative messages the students already hold about themselves which can then undermine confidence in other areas.

"Online resources can be a great way of bolstering academic performance, however, reliance upon them solely is often unwise."

So what's the alternative to online educational products?

Often parents resort to alternative schools with their greater focus on person-centred education, private or home schooling.

Yet for the overwhelming majority, these are not economically viable propositions, Ms Cormie said.

Ms Cormie said that independent research had shown that private tutoring with qualified teachers both increased individuals' confidence and gave parents a greater sense of control.

She said: "At the moment, I am looking for more tutors in academic subject areas because of the positive response to the business on the Peninsula.

"They have to be fully qualified secondary school teachers preferably with additional credentials in marking and adult learning areas.

"I am also getting a lot of requests for English as a Second Language tutoring as I am qualified in ESL and as a marker for Naplan."

Emails, 8 and 12 May 2016

Karen Cormie, Cycles In Tuition