Summary
Rob was a high school junior who was struggling in his chemistry class; he had a hard time understanding his teacher’s explanations and was falling behind. After failing a couple of quizzes, he knew he needed help from someone other than his regular teacher.
The Challenge
Rob’s learning style and his teacher’s teaching style were very different. Rob’s tutor discovered very early on that Rob learned new chemistry concepts best through analogies to familiar, everyday experiences, while his teacher emphasized a more direct approach to teaching chemistry. Rob needed to relearn material that he had failed to grasp and find ways to keep up with his class.
The Signet Solution
Rob’s tutor used their first meeting to assess what chemistry topics had been particularly challenging for him and then developed an analogy-based chemistry curriculum that they implemented together over the following months. Their tutoring sessions paralleled the curriculum of the high school chemistry class, but the delivery catered to Rob’s learning style. Rob and his tutor also spent some time during each session trying to bridge the gap between Rob and his teacher’s communication styles, developing strategies to re-interpret what the teacher said in terms that made sense to Rob.
By the end of the year, Rob was getting A’s and B’s on almost every quiz and test in chemistry, and he was coming to his tutoring sessions excited to share with his tutor how well he actually understood the topics. He passed his chemistry class with flying colors.
