My Story & The Why of Conscious Tutoring
For those of you who do not already know, my name is Christina.
I am the founder of Conscious Tutoring, and I wanted to share my story with you! I am a mom, M. Ed. Literacy Specialist and a certified Embodiment coach. Embodiment is a unique way to regulate your nervous system.
I have been teaching kids and training teachers for most of my adult life. I owned a nature-based outdoor school when my kids were younger. I was also the ESOL and reading specialist for their dual language immersion school. I have trained in almost every popular way to teach reading. I spent two weeks training at Columbia University with Lucy Calkins. I also trained in Orton-Gillingham later to balance out my skills. I have taught hundreds of children to read!
Here is what I noticed… kids need both skills and passion to do well in reading and writing. Here is another thing I noticed… sometime around 3rd grade teachers stop teaching kids how to read. Once silent reading begins it is very rare that assessments are done to understand what kinds of habits are being developed by older students. Most curriculums expect, that by third grade, kids already have all the reading, comprehension and spelling skills they will ever need.
Guess what? That’s not true. It’s not true for ANY child. Yet, it is detrimental to kids that are struggling with motivation, attention or any kind of learning issue.
What is reading and writing? It’s communication. Great reading depends on your ability to synthesize what you read, talk about it and to deeply relate to book characters. Great writing depends on your ability to summarize and communicate your ideas in a way that keeps the reader’s attention. Building an identity as a great communicator is an extremely important part of adult success. To me this is far more important than the “right now” benefit of better grades and scores. Even though those are important too!
I created Literacy for Life to be the perfect intervention and support program for older kids. I created it on four pillars:
Evaluation - We get to the bottom of what is really going on with both an in-depth online assessment AND a 1-1 reading specialist evaluation. We implement regular assessments in each session to monitor progress and plan next steps. We aren’t guessing based on one standardized digital test. We know what is going on.
Stamina - We meet twice a week for 45 minutes. We hold additional support silent reading sessions and create curriculum to help kids create reading habits. We build the stamina and mindset needed to build short term memory and a positive attitude towards reading and writing. Many tutoring options ultimately end up being a waste of time because they really aren’t frequent enough for students to make real progress.
Peers - We utilize the power of peers to keep sessions interesting. Kids are more likely to engage when other students are in the session. The kids learn as much from each other as they do from me. Older students need to learn in peer settings.
Science - We are using the best emerging practices in literacy to give kids access to interventions in our classrooms and online that they can’t access in a public school setting.
I am taking twelve students for the fall semester. Our school year program is a blend of 1-1 and small group sessions with additional online computer software access. We read real books AND we get ready for school assessments.
