Blog-Post Archives

Getting Excited about Learning a Foreign Language

March 28, 2013 Brad Hoffman

Learning a Foreign Language should be a wonderful opportunity – the key to new literature, cultures, film, friends, you name it! Unfortunately, however, it often ends up becoming just one more subject, complete with homework, tests and grades. So how can you keep foreign language learning interesting for you or your child?

Listen to music. What kind of music do you like to listen to most? Rap? Folk? Showtunes? I bet variations on it exist in the language you’re studying! For instance, I bought the soundtrack to Les Miserables, my then-favorite musical, in both French and Spanish. After listening to them consistently, my vocabulary in both languages grew by leaps and bounds.
Watch movies. If you’re still new to your foreign language, choose movies that look interesting (or that you’ve heard good things about) and watch them with the subtitles on. This way you can follow along with the stories and also get used to hearing native speakers pronounce the language. Feel more confident in your abilities? Put on your favorite movie and listen to it dubbed into your foreign language instead of English – listening to the different voices is always lots of fun, as is hearing how they translate various English words and phrases!
Read. What are you interested in? Politics? Sports? < strong >Arts? Food? Whatever it is, there’s a magazine (or website) for it written in the language you’re studying. Try reading the article through once without using a dictionary and see how much of its meaning you were able to glean. Then have another pass, looking up whatever words you didn’t know. You’ll be surprised how much you were able to get just from your own knowledge of the subject!
Travel. How better to practice your foreign language skills and get to know another culture than by travelling? Maybe you can’t fly off to Paris for a weekend, but what about Quebec? Or is someone in your school a native speaker? Get a cup of coffee with her and practice speaking only their language.

And while you’re learning about other cultures and practicing your new language, don’t be afraid to share tidbits about YOUR native culture with your new acquaintances.

By Alexandra Cohen-Spiegler, Private Tutor

The Importance of Pre-School Education

March 6, 2013 Brad Hoffman

At first glance, the daily activities of a preschooler may seem insignificant. Sure, learning your shapes is important, but one may wonder if pre-school is that significant in the development of a child. Can playing with Play-Doh and stacking blocks be the key to your child’s future success?

A blog post in The Wall Street Journal cites Dr. Celia Ayala, chief executive officer of Los Angeles Universal Preschool, who says that preschool is of the upmost importance for children. As Dr. Ayala says, “When they enter kindergarten ready to thrive with all the social, emotional and cognitive skills, they perform at grade level or above. When they don’t, that’s where that achievement gap starts.” Furthermore, she says that preschool alumni are much more likely to continue on to college, graduate school, and higher income careers.

However, fewer than half of children in the United States attend preschool and instead either stay home with their parents or caregivers or attend day care. Preschool, in many places, is neither mandatory nor free. Preschool in the US is also not regulated. Some countries in Europe, though, have a different model. For example, French toddlers are provided with free preschool education and learn social skills meant to help them become better citizens as well as better students.

Accordingly, policymakers in the United States point to providing preschool education as the best way to equalize students of varying backgrounds. The US government has been involved in providing preschool through programs such as Jump Start, which has been criticized by many for not having the benefits extend into elementary school. Although most funding for preschool education happens at the state level, recently the federal government has been trying to fuel preschool reform with half a billion dollars in challenge grants.

With budgets tight nation-wide, is preschool education something to be cut or considered?

Written by: Editorial Team, My Learning Springboard, Inc.

Mom, Can I Please Have a Math Tutor This Summer?

February 27, 2013 Brad Hoffman

During the summer, I was presented with a unique situation. “Peter” was a high school student interested in taking pre-calculus. This was not the most unreasonable request, but “Peter” was different. A student of a boarding school, he was only home for 6 weeks last summer. Still, not that unusual. But unlike most situations where parents want their kids to stay on track during the summer, “Peter” went to his mother and HE ASKED HER to find someone to work with him in math.

“I want to be an architect,” he said, when we first met. He had specific goals. But what made this so special was “Peter’s” awareness of his own work. “Peter” had attended multiple schools before settling at his boarding school, where special attention could be given to his learning disabilities. But in the search for the right environment he had been left with gaps in his math background. The gaps were significant, but he did not want to give up. He knew he needed to work hard and he was prepared to devote his summer to improving. It’s not often that a math teacher sees a summer student quite this eager.

“Peter” and I set up a timeline of 3 sessions a week for 6 weeks. When we first met he was emphatic that we just HAD to work on pre-calculus, but after an assessment he and I both saw that what he needed was a review of the fundamentals. We set up a schedule where each week covered a different concept, mostly within the range of number sense, algebra, and an introduction to geometry. The end of each week came complete with a quiz or a unit test. “Peter” liked structure and it was good for him to know what was coming up, so each day was like a typical class. We began with a warm-up, reviewed homework problems, tackled a new topic, then assigned further homework.

The real challenge was keeping “Peter” interested in basic number sense and algebra when he wanted to be working on trigonometry. I had to appeal to his creative side. Instead of just covering the basics of area and perimeter we used the dimensions of his home. I also appealed to his family’s strengths. His sister was very dedicated to his progress and agreed to help out. He could never say no to her, and as such she was a welcome help in getting him to complete his homework on our off-days.

By the end of the summer, “Peter” had made great progress. Not only were his algebraic skills moving along nicely, but he also improved his problem solving skills and math confidence. “Peter” is on the right path to becoming a successful architect.

By Aleeza Lubin, Private Tutor

A Road Map for Successful Parent: Teacher Conferences

February 21, 2013 Brad Hoffman

Conferences provide one of the best opportunities during the school year for parents and teachers to share important information. At times perspectives will differ but the goal of the conference will be the same: for the child to make academic progress, to feel valued and to be successful. Research has shown that when parents and teachers work together everyone benefits. The suggestions below will ensure that both parents and teachers arrive at the destination – your child’s successful academic achievement – with a clear and shared understanding of the journey ahead.

Getting Prepared

Be Proactive – If possible meet and get to know the teacher before the conference. This is important because if concerns and problems arise, you have already established a positive and trusting relationship with your child’s teacher
Assemble and Review Relevant Materials – gather appropriate materials to help prepare for the conference this may include current and past report cards, test scores, and student work samples. If there are any relevant medical concerns or information, be prepared to share that information as well. If you have not done so already, you will want to consider starting a file or notebook so this material is always in one place, in chronological order.
Avoid Surprises – Conferences aren’t the place for them. As a parent, you want to be continually up-to-date, knowledgeable and involved in your child’s academic and/or social emotional progress. If you’re initiating the conference, share the purpose of the conference with the teacher when you schedule the meeting. Don’t wait until you sit down at the table to share your concerns. Teachers don’t like surprises either.
Take Notes – It’s important to document conversations and recommendations, particularly if a student is struggling and concerns and strategies are being discussed. Depending on the situation, you will want to send a follow-up summary of notes to be sure everyone has the same understanding and to facilitate follow through.

Conferencing

At the start, restate the purpose for the conference and ask the teacher to provide an update on your child’s progress.
During the update, listen for specific data regarding your child’s progress in relation to grade level standards and benchmarks in academic subject areas.
Seek clarification or further explanation on anything you are unsure about. This is important because educational terminology is not familiar to everyone.
Ask the teacher to share work samples if they have not been provided. They will help to deepen your understanding about the information being shared.
Offer to be involved with your child’s learning outside of school. Ask for specific suggestions, materials, and/or strategies to enrich, extend or reinforce the concepts and skills learned during the school day.
If there are learning challenges or your child is struggling in a specific area, work closely with the classroom teacher to develop an intervention plan that includes a home component. The plan must identify specific and measurable goals to be accomplished within a set period of time. Remember to check in with the teacher regularly regarding the status of the intervention plan and your child’s progress.

In the End

By the end of the conference you should know:

Your child’s strengths
Goals and steps to facilitate improvement
How and when follow-up will occur
What you will be doing with your child outside of school to support these goals

Whether the conference is initiated by the parent or by the teacher, mutual respect and a positive tone are essential in ensuring a successful meeting and ongoing relationship. It is limiting to think that parent-teacher conferences must occur within the brick and mortar walls of the school building. Be creative. Technology provides a wide range of options such as phone, Skype, Face Time and Google Chat. The use of technology allows all stakeholders to be actively involved in their child’s education. The use of these tips provides a road map to alleviate a bumpy ride during parent-teacher conferences. The journey is worth it.

By Laurie Gross and Amy Shapiro
My Learning Springboard, Inc.

The Gap Year

February 19, 2013 Brad Hoffman

Quick disclaimer: If you know and have always known what you want to do with your life once you leave school, and absolutely nothing is going to sway your decision, then this article might not be for you. If, on the other hand, you are like many people your age and don’t really know what you want to be doing, read on!

There are many steps to adulthood: going to school for the first time; getting your first job; going out with your first boyfriend or girlfriend; and, in most places outside of New York City, getting your driver’s license. These are all formative times of our youths growing up in America. In traditional cultures around the world though, there have also been ceremonies dedicated solely for initiating youth into the rights and responsibilities of being an adult. Here in the US, we do have Confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs, and similar traditions in other faiths for religiously oriented families to mark the passage from childhood to adulthood. Even with these rites, there is no major break in routine; it is assumed in our busy, work-a-day, secular culture that the most “sensible” option is to go straight from high school to college, and then on to a career. The closest approximation we have to that coming-of-age transition might be a party celebrating high school graduation or one’s 18^th or 21^st birthday. Fun though they might be, these celebrations are a far cry from a rite of passage that would help secure your place in life after school.

Perhaps recognizing the importance of allowing students to have a taste of the “real world” before fully committing to a field of study in college, growing numbers of people have been appreciating the benefit of a Gap Year. In Australia, the UK, and other Commonwealth countries, where students must choose a specialization before entering higher education (in contrast to our liberal arts system), the Gap Year has been a significant factor in giving students this exposure to the wider world. Those who choose to take a gap year upon leaving high school are given the opportunity to work, travel, volunteer, and generally be out in the world for a year, learning their own valuable life skills before coming back to enter university. The sense of freedom and self-responsibility afforded by this period can be instrumental in figuring out how you fit into the surrounding society, and many students end up focusing their studies on aspects of the world or themselves they discovered while on the gap year.

In my own experience, I didn’t have the opportunity for such a gap year until after college. Growing up in a Japanese household with parents who had moved to the US for college (without a shred of English!) and graduated at the top of their classes, I found the stereotype of the intensely competitive Asian parents in my case to be… completely, completely true. It was understood that I, the eldest son, would of course follow my father into medicine as well. This wasn’t forced on me by any means – I truly believed that I too wanted to go straight through college, to medical school, to becoming a doctor, with not a breather in between. That was just the way it was.

So I graduated from high school and entered college the following autumn, with the full intention of knocking out all the prerequisites for med school. While I had excelled at (and enjoyed) math and science throughout high school, I found it hard to envision myself dealing with such “hard” sciences for the rest of my life. After a period of vacillation, I eventually parlayed those analytical and technical skills into a major in graphic design, which I found fairly satisfying. Even then, I felt like there was something else, some kind of deeper connection with my fellow human beings that I was missing.

It wasn’t until after I graduated in the summer of 2005 that I was able to have the kind of revelatory experience I had been hungering for. After travelling for most of that summer, I found myself on the Mississippi Coast two weeks after Hurricane Katrina had rampaged through. The subsequent year I spent working in Mississippi and New Orleans and my following experiences in disaster zones all around the world have been a formative factor in who I am now, and these experiences continue to inform the way in which I interact with the world both personally and professionally. While this same exact experience would not have happened if I had done a gap year four years earlier, I fully believe that having the opportunity to engage in this way then would have allowed me to more fully express my desire to be of assistance to the world, and I would probably have chosen a path more aligned with that goal.

If you are feeling something of the same uncertainty, why not look into the possibility of doing a gap year? My Learning Springboard can help!

By Toshiro Kida, Private Tutor

Getting Excited about Learning a Foreign Language

The Importance of Pre-School Education

Mom, Can I Please Have a Math Tutor This Summer?

A Road Map for Successful Parent: Teacher Conferences

Getting Prepared

Conferencing

In the End

The Gap Year

Company Overview

School Planning

Private Tutoring

Test Preparation