Redondo Beach, CA -- In case you haven’t heard about them, education coaches are the latest trend in personalized home tutoring services  -- and an increasingly popular alternative to summer school.  “Education coaches are like personal fitness trainers for the mind,” says Kim Phillips, owner of Bright Futures Tutoring Service n Redondo Beach.  “They’re credentialed, experienced teachers who come to your home and offer your child personal, individualized attention.”  Yet they offer much more than straightforward academic help.  “They’re detectives, cheerleaders, sounding boards…quasi-counselors, really.  They can help with absolutely anything and everything you need,” she continues.

Because education coaches offer such a wide array of services, including kindergarten readiness, basic subject remediation, college test preparation, diagnostic skills testing, study skills building, and specialized skills like computers, art and foreign languages, they work one-on-one with parents to design individualized curriculums.  “We had one student who needed algebra help, but her mom also wanted her to have private computer lessons, and her dad wanted her to start narrowing down her list of college choices.  The education coach provided all that, in one fell swoop.  Obviously, you won’t find that level of accommodation in a summer school,” says Phillips.

In addition, education coaches believe that any child can excel once the source of the problem is identified.  “When a student is faring poorly in school, it almost never has anything to do with intelligence,” Jen Muradaz claims.  “It can be caused by any number of things, like an unusual mental block, or poor motivation, or shyness, or boredom.  Perhaps the instructor’s particular teaching style didn’t jibe with that student’s particular learning style.  Or maybe it’s anxiety as a result of transitioning from one grade level to the next.  But it’s our job to get to the root of it and correct it, because often the teachers are too close to it, or too busy, to see it for what it is.”  

“A great education coach can come in and really spice things up, make things fun and accessible,” Phillips adds.  “Summer school is monotonous.  Parents constantly complain that their children get nothing out of it.  And if that’s the case, why keep sending them back?” April Ptak agrees.  “Kids think of summer school as a prison,” she says.  “It makes them angry and resentful and less inclined to learn.  And some of them feel really stigmatized by it.  But having an ‘education coach’ sounds kind of cool.”

In fact, hiring a summer education coach may be downright cost effective.  “One hour of concentrated study with an education coach is equivalent to several hours in a summer school classroom,” says Saddler.  “And the kids are the ones who benefit the most.  They get their academic needs met, and they can use all that remaining freed-up time for the things that summer is really for…playing, reading, swimming, biking, whatever.  Being kids.  That’s really important.  Education coaches know that, too.”