Tutor Snapshot: Laura Kurtycz

Laura Kurtycz (seen here with her pal Gilbert) has been tutoring with Nurturing Wisdom for almost two years. Students love Laura for the energy and enthusiasm that she brings to her sessions, and parents appreciate her skill for building confidence in her students. Laura has her B.A. in Chinese and Anthropology. She spent two years doing Teach for America in Chicago, and received her Master's in Early Childhood Education. To add to Laura's impressively varied background, she has also spent time in Africa volunteering at a baboon sanctuary, and working at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Long tails, dark brown hands, expressive eyes, warm hugs, and peppery breath. These are the sensory images that come to mind when I think back over my experience two summers ago, not long before I joined the Nurturing Wisdom team.

In July of 2009 I volunteered at the Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education (C.A.R.E.), a Chacma baboon sanctuary outside of Phalaborwa, South Africa. As a volunteer, I participated in all parts of running the Centre, including food preparation, enclosure maintenance, observation, and food procurement (which sounds fancy, but really just meant riding all over the countryside in a pick-up truck, or “buggie,” collecting free or heavily discounted vegetables from neighboring farms). The babies at the centre are anywhere from 3 months to a year old, and all of them are orphans. Some of them were kept as pets (until they got older and were not cute anymore), some watched their mothers shot or poisoned, and some were just found by the side of the road. One way or another, they ended up at CARE. In the enclosure, or “hok,” it is the volunteers’ job to observe, mediate, discipline, and provide comfort to the babies, as older sisters and mothers would do in a wild troop. The babies would otherwise lack this type of interaction, which is crucial to optimal development and growth.

Laura is in the middle, feeding Bella. Crosby sits on her lap with his tongue sticking out, while Jude looks on. The baboon in the back is Rita.

The babies spent the days together in an enclosure, goofing around and playing with toys, including balls, dolls, boxes, and a small white plastic bucket. This was a favorite toy - many an hour was punctuated by human giggles as we watched one baboon or another repeatedly and purposefully bounce off of walls with a bucket on his or her head. One of my favorite memories is of Gabby, a seven-month old. One particular afternoon, Gabby picked up the old white bucket and slapped it over her head. Unfortunately, it was about a quarter full of water. Gabby held the bucket in one hand, and stood, astonished and sopping wet. She stared at bucket, dumbfounded, as we laughed until we cried. But afterwards, wiping away the tears, I wondered what Gabby was really thinking. Did she understand what happened? Did she blame the bucket? Was she confused? Would she always look inside buckets from now on?

Watching the baby baboons that summer, I was constantly struck by how much they reminded me of my former kindergarten students. They quarreled, they fought, they played with toys and they wrestled with each other, all within the space of a few minutes. Baby baboons groom each other. Five year old girls braid each others’ hair. What is the difference, really? But the parallels run deeper. The babies were exploring and learning all the time. Gabby learned a valuable lesson that day about water and buckets (and looking before you leap!). All day, every day, some tiny baboon brain is digesting some other lesson, some other truth about baboon life, so that someday she will be able to venture into the world as productive, (dare I say, educated?) member of baboon society.

Fortunately, human children are easier to teach than baboons – I guess being able to speak English to them makes a big difference. (Then again, human children do not have tails to grab onto as they run by, making them harder to catch). Yet I often feel that the experiences are similar. In both cases, all the young ones ask from us is patience, love, guidance, and the willingness to let them learn their own lessons, even if it means getting wet.

A High Note Success Story: Darci plays "Do-Re-Mi"

Darci and I sat at her keyboard one day in early May for her weekly lesson. We began as always with review. I showed Darci a flashcard with an individual note on the staff, and she told me its letter name. Identifying each note correctly on her first try, she showed that she had memorized her note names, and proudly took the cards from me and shuffled them back into a neat pile on her stand.

“Wait, wait, Darci, now we have to play them!” I protested.

“Why?” she asked.

Why? I considered how best to answer this. Because this is your piano lesson? Darci is six. I decided that this answer probably would not suffice. So we proceeded to learn by doing.

Darci was learning to play the song "Do-Re-Mi," from The Sound of Music. I put the first line of the song in front of her and gave her two options: she could either play the notes, or she could just name them. Darci paused briefly. Then she began to play.

“Do…a…deer…a…fe..male… deer…” I reached for the paper, but she quickly burst out the next words and proceeded to sing the whole song.

After her trademark finale grin and long held vibrato, I asked Darci how she knew those notes. She pointed out where each note resided on the staff, and showed how she used that information to locate the notes on the keyboard.

“Do-Re-Mi has three brand new notes in it,” I told her. “We're going to have to find them on the keyboard before we can play the rest of the song.” Darci agreed, and I pointed out that she already knew what these notes looked like. She found her notecards, and we proceeded to work on the brand new notes.

When it came time for Darci's recital, I was so happy with her progress. Even though she's only six, I really appreciate the fact that Darci asks Why. I hope she continues to do so, because it puts her practice into context, and enriches her understanding of music.

Check out Darci's "Do-Re-Mi" recital:

Tutor Snapshot: Peter Kang

Peter Kang is one of Nurturing Wisdom's most experienced tutors. Not to mention the busiest - Peter works with more students every week than anyone else! Families rave about his patience, thorough knowledge, and investment in his students. You may not know that before Peter tutored with NW, he was in the Marines. Now you can learn a bit more about Peter's experience in the Marine Corps, and his journey to teaching.

­I floated through high school relatively unscathed by its drama. I played three varsity sports: football, wrestling and baseball. I went to all the dances - with dates, might I add. I worked after practice, then hung out with friends. I was in every honors class my school offered. There were not as many AP classes then as there are now, but I was in AP Calculus. I was on the state qualifying math team.

Unfortunately my ACT score projection was…well, let's just say that you could roll three six-sided dice and get a higher number. My guidance counselor said that if I wanted help choosing a college, there was a stack of brochures next to the door. I also took the ASVAB, which is taken by military enlistees to see which jobs they qualify for. I was perfect that day. I could be anything I wanted…in the military anyway. Later, I took the ACT and scored significantly higher, almost double my previous score projection.

As graduation came and went, my father and I locked horns regarding my future. I wanted to join the Marine Corps. He wanted me to attend university. Eventually I relented, as I was still too young to enlist without the blessing of my parents. As fall rolled around, I found myself on the campus of University of Illinois at Chicago.

Early in my first semester as a soon-to-be graduating senior, I received an early morning phone call from my mother. She told me to turn on the news. I stared in silent disbelief for a time. As disbelief turned into anger, I felt as if my mind had been made up for me. My future, at least the next few years of it, had been decided for me on that early Tuesday morning. I joined the masses at the recruiting office. I had my second perfect day of testing, which allowed me my choice of prestigious specialties: intelligence, maintenance, or communications. I didn’t want to practice being interrogated, nor did I want to fix equipment that other people broke. This left me in communications, with a three-foot antenna sticking out over my head (hey, at least I could call for help). Shortly thereafter, I graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, and two weeks later, as the saying goes, I was standing on the yellow foot prints.

I finished boot camp, infantry training, and two electronic communications courses in time to check into a unit that had just received its activation orders. In the four days between checking into my unit and going to war, I picked up a marriage license at city hall, got married, returned the necessary paperwork to city hall, added my wife to all my military papers, and then got packed.

Sooner rather than later, although it didn’t feel like it, we were sent home. Mission Accomplished. Or so said the banner that hung on the aircraft carrier where a former Air National Guard pilot landed. It sure didn’t feel like our mission was accomplished. Sure, I got a half dozen or so medals, but no parade. Men and materials were still being sent overseas and returning spent, if they returned at all. Some Marines that I worked with started taking exams which would grant college credit. Word had gotten around about my background; suddenly, I was very busy helping fellow Marines pass tests.

I reached a crossroad when I returned to civilian life, a life I had yet to experience. My wife and I had bought a home. She had finished her M.S. in Bioengineering while I was away, and was now headed to Toronto to pursue her PhD. At the same time, I was headed to New Orleans to pick up the pieces left behind by Hurricane Katrina. I wanted to go with her, to be supportive, to be there for her. But I needed to stay. I needed to keep things in order here, to make things better for her return. Teaching made sense. I felt good teaching. I could make a career out of teaching. My commitment to teaching took me through the halls of Northwestern University, and finally and into the folds Nurturing Wisdom.

Aha Moments & Mnemonic Devices

Even well into adulthood, I used to have the hardest time (embarrassingly enough) remembering which direction I had to turn to loosen or tighten things like screws or knobs. This culminated one day when I was trying to get some screws off the license plate of my car and it took me way too long to finish the task. After I complained to a friend, she taught me “Righty tight-y, lefty loose-y” as a way to remember this which worked like a charm! All the years of struggling to keep this straight in my head boiled down to a couple of simple lines and it’s something I won’t ever forget.

I was recently reminded of my “Ah-ha!” learning moment when I received an e-mail from one of our tutors. She was writing to share about an awesome breakthrough experience she had with one of her students who had struggled in the past to memorize the quadratic formula. As the tutor and this student were getting ready to go over the quadratic formula, the student told the tutor that he wasn’t looking forward to having to attempt memorizing it again. The tutor then presented a fun mnemonic for memorizing the quadratic formula to the student and he was able to memorize it in 5 minutes! Here's the formula and the mnemonic:

"Negative b couldn't decide whether he should go to the radical party or be square. He missed out on 4 awesome chicks and the party was over at 2am!"

I love hearing stories like this! We’ve been focusing on “creating the moments when you’ll love learning the most” for our students and the wonderful thing is that our tutors soak in these moments as much as their students do. The excitement that our tutors exude is contagious – it shows students that they have someone by their side cheering them on. It only takes a moment for something to click…even (as in my case) if it’s something you have been unsuccessfully trying to grasp for a long time. Maybe it’s through a fun mnemonic, some catchy lines or an explanation that’s presented in a unique way. Whatever it is, the moment that light bulb goes on for a student can be the beginning of something really great!

-Christian Kang, Tutoring Director Northshore

Looping: Becoming a Believer!

I started at Nurturing Wisdom before we incorporated looping as a major strategy for our tutoring. Now, I can't imagine doing a session without it, no matter the subject matter!

Looping has transformed me into an even better tutor than I thought possible. Because I'm only giving students one problem at a time, I'm constantly assessing my students as they work. I have to decide if they're showing mastery of a concept and are ready to move on to a harder problem, or if I need to keep repeating that same skill. Now, I'm truly teaching to mastery.

I started using looping with my ACT math students as a way to review a large number of algebra and geometry skills. Thanks to the book Why Don't Students Like School, I'm learning that students need to be exposed to concepts repeatedly in order for those concepts to be stored in long-term memory. I've realized that, when I first started tutoring, I wasn't giving students frequent enough practice.

A breakthrough for me came when I started working with a student who seemed to forget concepts after only one week. I started using looping with her, reviewing the same math concepts each week. Even though she was seeing the same material session after session, she made incredible progress because I was constantly taking these concepts to higher and higher levels. She was able to take her ACT math score from the low teens to a 25 by the time she took her second ACT test!

Before I started using looping, my students' ACT math scores would increase by just a few points. Now I see even bigger jumps! The score increases aren't the most important thing, though. The best part is that I'm seeing students' confidence increase greatly. Looping helps me give my students many chances to be successful with math.

During my three years at Nurturing Wisdom, I've gone from being intrigued by looping, to loving it, to being a true, devoted believer in how powerful of a strategy it can be for tutoring! I'm never going back!

~Heather Roan, Staff Development Coordinator

Making Memorization Fun

"How did you memorize all those lines?"

Those of us who've done theater are well acquainted with that question. I graduated from a conservatory program where I studied Acting. Over the years, I've been in quite a few plays, all of which involved memorization - sometimes just a few lines, sometimes pages and pages of text.

I think we can all agree that memorization is not the most fun activity. But quite often, especially with vocabulary or basic math facts, it's necessary. Here are a few tried & true tricks for taking the pain out of memorization, and injecting some fun into the process!

1. Give it a little rhythm. It may sound strange, but getting your inner Jay-Z on as you memorize words or definitions can really help. Chant the words as you tap out a rhythm on the table. You can even create a little melody, and sing them.

Get Creative: Take it a little farther by substituting the words of the catchiest pop song you know. Then, when you're studying for your Latin grammar test, you can simply crank up the Katy Perry and belt out, "'Cause baby you're a genitive! You indicate possession!" That will be so stuck in your head, you'll never forget the genitive again.

2. Boogie. That's right, boogie! Okay, you don't have to dance. But memorizing any information as you do a physical activity will lodge the information so deeply into your brain -- into your whole body, in fact, that you'd be hard pressed to forget it.

Get Creative: Do a set of ten crunches. Every time you crunch, yell out "Jugar!" Every time you release, "To Play!" This helpful multi-tasking will simultaneously prepare you for your Spanish quiz, and your next sports game!

3. Say It Out Loud. This is an extremely helpful little trick. The more senses you can use to internalize information, the better. You're using your eyes, as you read the information off the page, you're using your ears, as you hear what the words sound like, and you're using muscle memory, because you're feeling what it's like to form the words with your mouth.

Get Creative:

If you're like me and have no shame, say the words out loud in a British accent. The strangeness of the sounds will also help the information stick.

4. Take a trip. Studying in different locations has been proven to help information stay longer. Walk all over the house as you memorize.

Get Creative: Make a game of it: set the timer on your cell phone for two minutes. Every time it beeps, move to a new location. Your family may think you're insane, but you'll do great on that next quiz!

5. Build a Memory Palace. This trick is not for the faint-of-heart. Joshua Foer, a journalist, recently wrote an article in the New York Times about his recent foray into memory competitions. In it, he describes the way he builds an imaginary mansion in his mind, populates it with off-the-wall images and characters, which he then associates with specific nuggets of information to memorize. When it's time to recall the information later, he simply takes a mental stroll through his own imaginary memory palace, and uses the crazy images he himself created to trigger his memory into pulling out the bits of information that he wants. An impressive feat.

Have any memory tricks you'd like to share? Let's hear 'em!

Tutor Snapshot: Julia Wollrab

Julia Wollrab is a tutor in Chicago, with extensive and varied teaching experience. She has a B.A. in Latin American Studies and a minor in Art History from the University of Chicago. Julia also had a career as a professional ballet dancer, working as a soloist with companies all over the world.

When asked to pick my favorite travel story, I find it impossible to isolate a single experience. Was it midnight dining on suspicious yet deliciously spicy goat at a roadside restaurant in Ethiopia? Getting lost in the labyrinthine streets of old Cairo, where one is exposed to a range of human activity that fiction usually only approximates? Coping with the "interesting" toilets in a theater in Hangzhou, China in my "Tarantella" tutu? Surviving the crowds in the Mexico City streets and subway trains without dislocating a shoulder? Scaling the Great Pyramid, or the Great Wall? Successfully navigating enormous potholes at high speeds in a 1986 Ford Escort on the Alaskan highway? Exploring the exoticism of Oak Park, Illinois? Which moment has most thrilled and inspired me? It's hard to say.

I've been extremely fortunate in that my former career as a dancer meshed perfectly with another of my passions: travel. Touring with various professional dance companies over the course of 20 years allowed me to indulge my craving for adventure - on stage and off. Many a paycheck went straight to my plane ticket fund, for trips that supplemented the extensive touring I was already doing.

What is clear to me is that this form of experiential learning - exposure to radically diverse spatial and cultural environments, to both tragic poverty and awesome beauty, and confrontation with the unexpected - has provided me with a sort of "feedback loop" of learning. Eventually it inspired me to engage in formal academic study at the University of Chicago. The more I am able to witness, to actually "be" somewhere and absorb information with my senses, the more I become intellectually curious about how things came to be that way. Conversely, the more I learn through research, the more I want to witness how that reality, or that history, is lived out day-to-day.

It's fun to share my love of travel and culture with my students - especially as we work on their history or social studies texts. And sometimes, the only way to really stave off my obsession with travel as learning and learning as travel is, simply, more travel.