A 39-year-vintage tutor is at the center of some quite worrying allegations coming from the parents of a fifteen-year-old boy. Leticia Lowery appeared before a decision Thursday morning on a charge of online solicitation of a minor after the parents of the teen claim they discovered sexually expressed messages from the lady on their son’s telephone. Lowery is accused of providing to carry out intercourse acts with the teenage boy at the same time as he came to her home for tutoring.
The determine of the teen said they frequently reveal their son’s social media, and four days ago discovered worrying and sexually expressed textual content messages allegedly from Lowery that included offers to perform sex acts and a nude image. The determine additionally claims a text message from Lowery asked for a picture of the teen’s non-public parts.
The educator is now going through a charge of online solicitation of a minor.2. What is the length of a session, and how often should the student meet with you? To be the most effective, tutors should meet with students 2-3 times a week. Sessions can range from 1/2 hour to 2 hours, depending on the age of your child. Very young children have short attention spans and should meet more often but for shorter periods. High school students can focus for up to two hours if the tutor varies the activities and keeps the discussions lively. Even if students are attending 2-hour sessions, they should still meet with a tutor at least twice a week. By only meeting once a week, students are not able to get enough feedback about the material they are covering and do not have the consistency they need to succeed in their problem areas.
3. How long have you been tutoring? Tutors who have at least one year of experience have had time to work out the kinks in their systems. That’s not to say that tutors just starting won’t be excellent teachers for your students, especially if they have previous experience as teachers. However, novice tutors probably haven’t worked out their billing system their cancellation policy, or other types of business matters. They may not have as many resources available to them as tutors who have been in business longer. Conversely, just because a tutor has 20 years of experience doesn’t mean he/she will be a good match for your child. Sometimes older tutors get set in their ways and have difficulty adjusting their system to new material or children with problems focusing. Making sure your student gets along with the tutor is one of the most important factors in ensuring the relationship is a successful one.
4. Are you a certified teacher? Certified teachers have had to pass minimum competency exams in their areas of expertise. So you can be sure that a certified teacher has a certain basic knowledge of educational concepts and at least some level of proficiency in his/her subject areas. Generally, teachers are either certified as elementary (covering grades K-8) or secondary (covering grades 6-12). As you can see, the certifications overlap in grades 6-8, the middle school years. So teachers with either elementary or secondary certifications would be qualified to tutor these grade levels. Depending on your child’s age, you want to get a teacher with the appropriate certification. That’s not to say a teacher with a secondary certification can’t help an elementary student or vice versa. It’s just that teachers with an elementary certification have had specialized training dealing with younger children, whereas teachers with a secondary certification have had more opportunities to focus on the more difficult subject matter.
5. How do you handle kids with learning problems like ADHD and dyslexia? Teachers should be aware that students with learning difficulties often require different strategies than students who have not been diagnosed with these challenges. Tutors should outline some of their specific strategies for helping your child based on what his/her problem happens to be. For example, what do they do when your ADHD daughter can’t seem to focus? What kind of approach would they take to help your dyslexic son learn to read?
It would help if you made sure that tutors are sensitive to these types of learning issues and have strategies to deal with them. One of the qualities that all tutors require is patience, so it would be beneficial to observe a tutoring session to see for yourself how patient the tutor is with your student. If the tutor does not allow parents to watch a session, perhaps they would allow you to tape or video record a session to be less distracting for your child. Also, get feedback from your children as to how helpful the tutor is. Don’t continue with a tutor who your child does not like and is not enthusiastic about seeing.
6. What is your area of expertise? Different tutors will have different strengths and weaknesses. Just ask the tutor what they feel comfortable teaching. Your high school sophomore might need help in Geometry, Chemistry, and Spanish. But it is unlikely you will find a tutor who can teach all 3 of these subjects. Often someone good at Math also is good at Science, and someone good at English will also be good at a foreign language. But you might also find that someone with an English degree is also excellent with first-year Algebra. You never know. So you should find out what the tutor’s credentials are and how much experience they have teaching the various subjects your student needs help with. Then make an informed decision about whether the tutor is qualified to help your student with the subject. High school students may need to see more than one tutor to get all their questions answered for each subject area.