How common is it for high schooler to have a tutor?

[Anonymous]

At the "good" schools, do the teachers not do office hours?

Is the tutoring more about learning or about competing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the "good" schools, do the teachers not do office hours?

Is the tutoring more about learning or about competing?

+1
PP here. Agree. Growing up, you went to office hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the "good" schools, do the teachers not do office hours?

Is the tutoring more about learning or about competing?

+1
PP here. Agree. Growing up, you went to office hours.

In college.

[Anonymous]

My son has two tutors and he is a tutor.

He has a math tutor and is also a math tutor. Lots os high school kids come to him for tutoring. He has a German tutor for AP German. He’s a junior and is taking calc 3. Oh he has 3 if you count the SAT prep which helped him get an 800 on his math and working to break past 700 on his English.

Do professional athletes not have personal trainers? Do college D1 athletes not have positional coaches?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the "good" schools, do the teachers not do office hours?

Is the tutoring more about learning or about competing?

+1
PP here. Agree. Growing up, you went to office hours.

As a high school science teacher we have very limited time to offer much help outside of the classroom. I teach 5 classes and have nearly 120 kids I need to plan for and grade. I also do not get paid much so I do not work outside of my contracted hours. All of my free time, including my lunch is spent on grading and planning and bullshit training.

[Anonymous]

High percentage have tutors, my dd included. She’s had some kind of tutoring since 7th grade, started at Huntington then moved to private sessions in high school. Some was remedial and others are to keep her on track. Chinese is a killer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine had tutors where they needed help. For DS that was a writing and EF tutor in 9th grade and French in 9th-10th. For DD, French in 9th and then math in 10th-11th.

We learned with #1 that our middle school does an awful job teaching the basics of French grammar so the 9th grade French tutor was helping them get up to speed on what the MS didn't teach. We recommended that tutor to a lot of people coming out of our MS's French program.

We hired an excellent tutor starting from 5th grade to teach Spanish for both my students. They started on Spanish in 6th grade (magnet curricullum) at school. My aim was that my kids be fluent in the language and finish AP Spanish by 10th grade or so. The tutor was a public high school Spanish teacher. My kids are high achieving students so it was not remedial.
Our experience in the public school system has been that math, science and fl teachers are pretty much hit or miss. we always had insurance against a subpar teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our non-DMV private it is SO common. We didn't realize it for many years, but we eventually figured out that we were basically the only chumps not tutoring our child in something.

We are in DMV and we know an AP family that tutors for every single course. Which tells me that the kid/s probably do not belong in AP. The parents see it as "well we don't want to dumb our kids down to (the other kids) level", but honestly, if you need to be tutored regularly in every =subject - then it does seem the kid/s is/are in the wrong classes.

That, and you can't have a tutor at work, when the time comes.....

Hey, OP - The above poster is why some people don't talk about it. If your kid doesn't need one, great! If the time comes when they do, it's great that you have the resources.

Actually--I make a point to tell just this type of parent that my kids do have tutors--and yes to get ahead---some people in the DMV need to be reeducated and have to learn that it is a free country and for the time being I can control how I spend my money.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son has two tutors and he is a tutor.

He has a math tutor and is also a math tutor. Lots os high school kids come to him for tutoring. He has a German tutor for AP German. He’s a junior and is taking calc 3. Oh he has 3 if you count the SAT prep which helped him get an 800 on his math and working to break past 700 on his English.

Do professional athletes not have personal trainers? Do college D1 athletes not have positional coaches?

Yup--my daughters also has a math tutor and now she is tutoring kids that were basically ahead of her in 3rd grade.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks, everyone, for the responses. This has been very enlightening. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it but I feel like I've been living under a rock. We do have the means to get DS a tutor but just never occurred to us to get one because we didn't think he "needed" one. This is not to say things have always been smooth sailing but we have been fortunate that DS has always been good about self monitoring and hunkering down on his own when he needs to. As another poster mentioned, if a student is in advanced classes, it was assumed it's because they can handle it. I realize now that's a very old school way of thinking so absolutely no judgment placed on those parents who are doing all they can to give their kids an advantage. I also appreciated the comment about tutors getting deeper into the content and helping better prepare them for college.

This reminds of the time when I first discovered how many of DS' teammates on his travel team were getting private coaching on the side. Lol! Again, we were a little late to the party. Yes, we are fortunate to have the means to give our DC the advantages they need to help them be successful but neither DH nor I grew up wealthy, so we didn't have access to these types of opportunities so I guess we are somewhat ignorant to how common this is and how the game is played. Plus no one seems to openly talk about it IRL. Thank goodness for DCUM!

You are us, we are you. We felt so dumb when we realized this (same with the sports). Sigh.

Not OP but I am also surprised by this thread. I have a junior and eighth grader in MCPS and neither of them have had or needed a tutor. They are in honors and AP classes and get great grades. Not bragging but just to say I’m not being clueless, it just never occurred to me to find a tutor since they haven’t had a hard time in classes.

They may have simply gotten lucky with straightforward teachers. I think every school has a few notorious teachers who are impossibly difficult. My kid has one now and, trust me, your kid would be having a tutor as well! It’s quite unfair the schools allow this to happen, but that’s another story!

[Anonymous]

Uncle Thomas who sits in the Supreme Court doesn't sound bad at all! It's a free country! If you want to get some action, then go ahead and become a judge yourself. No one is stopping you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty much all my kids' friends have tutors in one to three subjects. These are all kids in advanced classes.

These are students who would fail advanced classes without help. No different than kids getting tutors because of learning disabilities. You don’t waste time with a tutor if it’s not necessary.

[Anonymous]

MCPS is offering free tutoring. We absolutely use it. I don't see why you wouldn't? We will pay when over, especially for math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pretty much all my kids' friends have tutors in one to three subjects. These are all kids in advanced classes.

These are students who would fail advanced classes without help. No different than kids getting tutors because of learning disabilities. You don’t waste time with a tutor if it’s not necessary.

It's not a waste of time to support a child. There aren't textbooks and the teaching style is way different than when we grew up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS is offering free tutoring. We absolutely use it. I don't see why you wouldn't? We will pay when over, especially for math.

Well, maybe because this post is in the Tweens and Teens forum, and not everyone in the world attends MCPS? Oh, and also, there's no guarantee that free tutoring will be a permanent thing. My kids attended another district before the pandemic, and there was never any sort of free tutoring or the ability to stay after school for help. Kids got one study hall per week or lunch to see help IF teachers were available.