Sylvan Learning Center, 09/03/2003

I hate weeks with a Monday holiday. For whatever reason it makes the week hellish.

Last night we had our 36 hour meeting at Sylvan for the GirlChild. She has been in reading tutoring, to the tune of $38 an hour, twice a week, every week, for the last six months. They tested her again early in August and her reading level had gone from 1.6 grade level to 3.0 grade level. She is finally reading at grade level!

The site manager (I can't remember her exact title, it might be Director) didn't tell us the GirlChild was ready to stop coming but I kind of got that from what she did say. She told us that if the GirlChild is resentful about coming it might be having a detrimental effect on her learning there. She told us that sometimes a break will help kids who want to stop. And she said something else (this hellish day has made my brain go dead) along those lines. What she didn't tell us was: The GirlChild is ready to stop coming to tutoring.

When we signed the GirlChild up last spring, her confidence was at an all time low. They told us they thought it would take 144 hours of tutoring to bring her to grade level. They wouldn't make us the "raise the reading level by one grade in X number of tutoring sessions or your money back" guarantee. She couldn't read Clifford the Big Red Dog books that had one line of text per page; now she can read chapter books with ease. Over the summer she read aloud somewhere in the neighborhood of 55-60 books; I know because we kept a list. She told me recently that she didn't need to go to Sylvan anymore because she knew how to read. She told me at dinner the other night she was the best reader in her class. They have worked miracles with her.

I guess I would have felt better if they had told me outright that she could stop coming and would be o.k. I worry that if we stop going she will get behind and we will undo all the confidence building we've done these last six months. I worry that if we stop going and have to start again, it will be worse for her than if we never stopped going.

We got some papers home after the first full week of school that concerned me. They had five or six words across the top of the page and a list of similar words in columns below. She had to figure out which word from the top went with which of the words in the column. She bombed it. She didn't get one right out of the five or six problems.

Another assignment had five or six words across the top and blanks in a written passage below. She was suppose to fill in the blanks with the words across the top based upon the context. She only got one of those right.

When I quizzed her about these assignments she offered several explanations. One was that she didn't understand the assignment so she just guessed. Another was that she just couldn't do it so she guessed. Finally she offered that she wanted to be finished so she could do something else so she just put anything in the blanks. I don't know whether the truth is in there somewhere or it is something else entirely that she can't articulate.

I guess tomorrow I'll add "call the GirlChild's teacher" to my list of things to do. I'll talk to her about those two assignments. I'll inquire whether there are any others like that I don't yet know about. I'll seek her opinion about the GirlChild's reading ability and whether she has an opinion about whether we need to continue reading tutoring.

I'll be glad it's Thursday and the weekend is almost here.