General tutoring services focus on the immediate academic issues only and require students to attend long, open-ended generalized homework study sessions. The Ansari Approach believes in first determining an accurate diagnosis of your student and then provides recommendations for an individualized, research based plan based on your student’s needs that may only require a limited, short-term solution.
Frequently Asked Questions
When a child struggles in a specific subject because they are experiencing some short term difficulties in the classroom, a tutor is required to help catch them up. In contrast, educational therapy targets specific areas of concern that may hinder the student’s ability to perform in the classroom and/or complete homework efficiently.
If a student displays signs of long-term struggles or larger gaps in their learning such as struggling in English due to issues such as reading comprehension or difficulty in math due to an inability to manipulate numbers, an educational therapist is needed to help remediate those gaps.
The purpose of educational therapy is to build on and utilize a student’s strengths in order to address their areas of weakness. Therefore, the student becomes an active, rather than passive, learner who is able to take control of their learning and walk away with more confidence, problem solving skills, and a repertoire of strategies to pull from when faced with similar challenges at school. In most cases, our educational therapists work closely with tutors and teachers to help supplement their work without overwhelming the student.
At C4L, our staff brings decades of experience in school psychology, special education, and teaching to bridge the gaps between parents and educators. As part of our advocacy process, our services can include attending meetings, writing letters, and helping with decisions when needed. We understand the school system and work to develop a collaborative team approach.
We believe in measurable outcomes demonstrating successful results. Regular ongoing assessments are provided to you to monitor if the program is meeting your student’s needs. Each student experiences a different rate of change based on their particular cognitive, behavioral, and emotional situation.
As a rule, most students know they are struggling – academically, socially, or behaviorally. It is important to present this assessment in a positive light. Acknowledge that they are working hard but that some things are just “harder” for them than for other students and you want to help them figure out how to make things “easier.” Use phrases like “I see you working twice as hard as everyone else to do half as well,” or “If you couldn’t see clearly, I wouldn’t tell you that you are just dumb, I would take you to the eye doctor to figure out how to help you. We are getting you tested so we know exactly how to help you.”
Remind them that everyone struggles with something in their lives, whether it is math, reading, singing, hitting a baseball, or painting a picture. Your student is no different. We will identify where they are strong and where they are weak and help them build their skills.
There is no way to “study” for any of the assessments we will be giving your student. We want to know what they know, where they are. All of the tests are made to administer to a specific age range (i.e., 5 – 11 years old, or 9 – 18 years old). They will generally start out easy and progress in difficulty until your student no longer knows any of the answers. We explain this to students and remind them, for example, that if they are in 5th grade and are being tested on 8th grade material, we just want to see what they know. We do not expect them to know material that has not been presented to them yet. However, we often find that students excel in a specific area and it is important to identify those areas – both for our information, but also to encourage your student by pointing out their personal strengths.
It is vital that your student arrive for testing well rested and well nourished. A good night’s sleep and a balanced, healthy meal will enable your student to perform their very best. They are welcome to bring snacks if they wish. We keep a supply of crackers, animal cookies, and red licorice on hand and are always willing to take water and bathroom breaks.
If your student takes daily medication, it is critically important (unless otherwise advised by our staff) that you continue their medication regimen. We will ask about medication prior to each testing session.
If your student is sick or does not feel well, please call us to reschedule your appointment, not only out of consideration of our staff and other clients, but also because a sick student cannot perform to their full potential.
As mentioned before, the assessment process generally takes between 2 – 4 weeks, but this can vary based on your student’s availability, the comprehensiveness of the evaluation, and your student’s testing style. Some students provide prompt responses and move through the process quickly. Other students take their time to consider each response and consequently, the process can take longer. We want each student to move at their own pace (within reason, of course!).
At a midway point in the testing, we will perform a file review of the main assessments and determine if more specific testing is warranted.
Once testing is completed, your student’s file will move into the scoring process. This will generally take 1 – 2 weeks and includes any rating scales that have been handed out as well as assuring that your student’s file is complete with history and previous testing information.
A review will be scheduled for parents only. At this time, one of our doctors will sit down with you and review all of the information obtained during the assessment. You will be provided with a diagnosis and a plan of action. Please allow 2 – 3 hours for this meeting.
After the review is completed, your student’s file will move to the reporting process. Reports are written in order that the reviews are completed and generally can take 3 -4 weeks to complete. The reports are comprehensive and include a description of each test administered, the results obtained by your student, and a thorough discussion of those results. In addition, a diagnosis (if appropriate) and plan of action are included.
- “Labeling” depends on the client’s preferences. Because C4L is a private practice, we abide by strict confidentiality rules.
- We only release information to the client/parents unless otherwise permitted. We focus more on educating all parties involved in order to help them better understand the symptoms associated with the diagnosis. We develop a plan to address and reduce those symptoms rather than the diagnosis itself.
- An assessment is only valid for 3 years and needs to be renewed in order for the diagnosis to be current.
- In most cases it behooves our clients to have documentation dating back. In order to qualify for accommodations during most high-stake testing situations (i.e. SAT, LSAT, GMAT, etc.) and in college, a history of learning difficulties requiring accommodations is necessary. The further back it goes, the easier it is to qualify for accommodations.
- We leave it to our families to determine what they want to do with their results.
Because our services are all individualized it is difficult to quote a cost prior to developing a plan with the clients.
As a professional incorporation, we are aware of the current fees associated with our services and pride ourselves on staying within the commensurate rates of our industry.
C4L does not accept insurance; however, we can provide superbills for some of our services provided from our Irvine office.
Here are examples of the most frequent inquiries we receive from parents who are considering C4L’s services and programs:
Our daughter has been tutored since she was in the second grade. She’s in the seventh grade now. We usually see some improvement in her schoolwork at the beginning of the school year, but by the end of the year, she is hardly passing her classes. Is this the wrong tutoring for her? With proper tutoring, can her higher grades be sustained throughout the school year?
It sounds like your daughter’s symptoms have been treated through tutoring, but the underlying cause of the symptoms has not been determined. Tutoring often helps the child to get through the school year because the tutor helps with homework and studying. The problem with tutoring is that it often increases the child’s dependence on others rather than making the child more independent. If the underlying problem is not addressed, eventually the child will get to a level where even tutoring will not be sufficient.
At C4L, we have educational therapists who work on resolving the child’s underlying processing problem. Of course, the first step is typically to get the child evaluated to determine exactly what the problem is. After the evaluation, a plan of action will spell out the steps that can be taken to help your daughter become a successful and independent learner.
Our son is seven. We watch him look at the pictures in his story books and notice that he’s making the words up. When he speaks, he has difficulty thinking of the right word to express what he’s trying to say. Will this get better when he reaches the second grade?
Children pass through so many phases that it’s tempting to hope that time will heal all difficulties. However, when it comes to reading difficulties, just the opposite is true. If your seven-year-old son is struggling in reading, the problem will likely get worse if there is no intervention. research has shown this to be true. In addition, your son’s difficulty thinking of the right word could be a learning problem that is related to his struggles with reading.
We suggest that you get your son evaluated to get to the root of the problems he is experiencing. Once you know the exact nature of the problem, you can help him to get over it.
My husband and I are totally stressed out over the amount of time it takes our daughter to even start her homework. She’s becoming really aggressive with us when homework time comes around. Dinner time is awful because we know we’ll have to go through the same old battle as the night before.
At first, we figured our daughter was simply going through the regular transition all teens go through, but her grades are suffering and so are her relationships with her friends. How old are the children that visit your center? Is she too old?
We typically specialize in children between ages 5 and 18—school age. But we have also assessed children as young as two-years-old. In addition, we have assessed many adults. We are accustomed to helping families with exactly the type of problem you are experiencing. Homework struggles is often a symptom of some other learning problem or of a problem with sustaining attention and getting organized. The teen experience adds a whole new dimension to the problem. The short answer to your question is, “No, your daughter is not too old for us to be of assistance. In fact, we have assessed many teenagers who present with the same issue as your daughter.”
I’ve slowly detected an irregular pattern to our child’s speech. He pauses and then looks at us for reinforcement. He’s been given a hearing test and we’ve been told there’s nothing wrong. His teachers can see something but they can’t pinpoint the problem. Might the tests The Center for Learning administers give us an indication of what is happening to our child?
Here at The Center for Learning we work in a multi-disciplinary format. This is a fancy way of saying that we recognize that you’re far more likely to get to the root of a problem if you have professionals with different areas of expertise participating in the evaluation. In the case of your son, our Speech and Language Pathologist, Wendy Roberts, would be an important member of the evaluation team. As always, we would want to rule out other possible explanations, but a speech and language evaluation would be a vital part of the assessment.