So what is a tutoring center?

As Theresa and I began to evaluate our progress last year, one thing became very clear: we needed to find a new and innovative way to help our students with special needs within the classroom. However, the more we studied the idea of "special needs", the more we realized that these were, more often than not, just needs.

All of our students, at one time or another, have needed extra help. Some can get this help at home, others get it from their peers, and still others attend outside activities. We wanted to offer those same types of help during the school day which would allow us to ensure that these areas could be corrected before they became problems.

Our tutoring center was therefore born. Both Stacie and Marisa have very full schedules and meet with students almost every hour of the day. They do a large number of activities, but their most common task is explaining things in a slightly different way. Fortunately, this allows many of our students to keep up with our very rigorous academic standards - standards that are truly paying dividends, because Saint Pius X again scored in the top 10% of all schools in the nation last year in math and reading (based on our Iowa Test scores), something we are very, very proud of.

Despite its great success in doing so, the tutoring center is about more than just helping students stay caught up. We also use this as an opportunity to make sure that all of our students who are very interested in a particular topic have the means to make studying that topic a reality. This is where our language lab comes into play.

At this time, we currently have 12 students signed up for six different languages. This will allow them the opportunity to be excited about coming to school everyday, but it will also remind them about some of the universal tenets of both our faith and our country. We are universal, we are not isolationist, and eventually, we hope that all of our students will have the opportunity to spend time abroad and learn about other cultures and places. It is our hope that the language lab will serve as a means to get them excited about these opportunities.

Questions or comments about all of this? Shoot me an email or respond in the comments below. And remember the road map; there will be plenty more information shot out this week.

Also, check out the pictures: