FAQs

11. What is the difference between your teaching as an Educational Specialist and that of a regular tutor?

That is the quintessential question. A “tutor”, by definition, is a private teacher, typically one who instructs the student individually or in a very small group. Regular tutoring usually involves someone in the role of “teacher”, who may or may not be educationally credentialed or state certified as such, helping the student to better cope with the current school curriculum and successfully execute the assigned work on a daily or weekly basis. A “Specialist” is a highly skilled individual, appropriately professionally credentialed and certified, possessing detailed, state-of-the-art research-based knowledge in a specific or restricted field - in this case, special education. Our practice is predicated upon the belief that children with special instructional needs require and deserve special instructional programs geared precisely to their unique learning profiles. The teaching, in this case, is not to the school curriculum. Instead, it is to the carefully diagnosed and identified underlying skills and abilities that are not developmentally age appropriate. Through utilization of a constant diagnostic-prescriptive approach, the highly skilled educational specialist delivers a dynamic program using special instructional approaches, methods, materials, and techniques. This serves to build the necessary “infrastructure” - a solid, evenly developed skill base- which will eventually permit the child to become an independent learner capable of accessing the school curriculum on a level consistent with documented potential.