In-Home Tutoring For Academic Success younger 862-221-6621 About The Company

		Passaic Valley Tutoring is an affordable alternative to expensive corporate learning centers. We are five tutors, all with masters degrees, who have taught as graduate assistants and at tutoring agencies like Princeton Review, Sylvan and Chyten. We got tired of the standardized curricula, and bureaucrats who kep pushing a one-size-fits-all approach. We tutor language arts, reading, writing, history, social studies, SAT prep, and most math and science courses, but are real passion is to give students a solid foundation in the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed
by their own measure of what success will come to mean to they themselves. Our goal is for students to improve their performance by helping them learn how to seek out novel solutions, to be active participants in a learning process in which both tutor and student collaborate. We consult with parents to set clear goals about the skills and content that the parents whished to be mastered, but the one-to-one individualized process by which those goals are attained is more flexible than in traditional classroom learning. (Please don't call us and say "Johnny's really smart but he just doesn't do the work!" We're tutors not motivational coaches).

If a child is willing to work with us we can help. To give kids the help they need we focus on building core knowledge and also academic skills such as:

= reading comprehension (esp. the ability to separate out relevant information from that which is superfluous with the applied context).

= creative problem solving (for the inevitable instances when the application of previous formulas and ways of doing things no longer yields a satifactory result).

= critical thinking (examining new informational from a variety on intedisciplinary perspectives, so that underlying assumptions are questioned and conventional wisdom is not considered wisdom only for its own sake).

= for older students---writing and research: demonstrating of coherent and well-organized thought, combined with the capacity to seek out relevant information, cite that information correctly, and to insert it where the reason and cogent evolution of the ideas it relates to makes most effective use of it. Writing must also employ the accepted academic practices for paraphrasing, citation and such.

What We Tutor

We tutor language arts, reading, writing, history, social studies, algebra, geometry, some sciences, SAT prep, and most New Jersey standardized tests. Unlike typical teacher who have Masters of Arts in teaching our tutors have subject Mastrers Degrees in the fields of interest that inspire them: political science, sociology, mathematics, economics, and creative writing. Many of us have BAs or minors in political economy, psychology, socialogy, anthropology, intenational law, and environmental hsitory. All of us were required to read and write an average of one book and one paper a week for many years, so we know what professors expect for a given assignment.

How We Tutor

We believe that in private tutoring the student and tutor shoudl be free to ask whatever questions they wish. In a classroom setting students are encubered by the expectations of their peers. No child wants to ask a question, no matter how insightful, that makes them appear as if they are trying to impress the teacher, neither do they wish to ask anything that makes them appear unintelligent. Think back to your own time in school! If you did not know the spelling of a historical character would you put up your hand and ask the teacher to spell it out for you? Probably not!

Besides student's "self-editing," classroom teachers are trying to cover course content requirements, often under new testing regimes. They must hold the attention of twenty students, all of whom have different abilities. What happens is that dates and events are taught to the middle 70% of the class, and students too smart or too confused get underserved.

The classroom teachers' questions are designed to elicit short-answer responses. As tutors we've seen test prep sheets that use thirty basic questions such as "Where is the Mason-Dixon line? What was the Missourri Compromise? Etc." Necessary facts, but the students were not being encouraged to go out on a tangent, to reach accross a disciplines, or to query how a technological innovations, or a new idea led to a social upheavals or a revolution in the streets.

As tutors we walk each of our students through a problem step by step. When students have to explain their work, misconceptions in core areas are quickly revealed, and we can focus on the exact nature of the difficulty rather than simply teaching a dumbed down version of the same material.

What We Don't Tutor

We tutor reading comprehension and help younger reader pronounce words but we don't teach phonics. We do ESL, reading, and writing, but not English Literature. We don't make sure that students do their homework unless we meet with them every day and we don't teach study skills.

In our experience students who do "do not test well" lack either core content concepts or the ability to write at grade level (skills we do tutor). Our priority is not simply to pass the next test, it is to address the problems that brought your child to us in the first place. Without the time constraints of the classroom we can focus on areas that students find either particularly difficult or particularly interesting. We normally do additional research and bring supplemental material. For more information read Tutoring Benefits and Reading, Writing, and Arithmatic.

Passaic Valley Tutoring. We've Got A Lot To Learn.

For information on our policies read the FAQs then contact us at 862-221-6621

Some of the locations we commonly serve are

Belleville, Bloomfield, Bogota, Caldwell, Cedar Grove, Clifton, Elmwood Park, Essex Fells, Fair Lawn, Fairfield, Franklin Lakes, Garfield, Glen Ridge, Hackensack, Haledon, Hawthorne, Lincoln Park, Little Falls, Livingston, Lodi, Maplewood, Millburn, Montclair, North Caldwell, Nutley, Oradell, Parsippany, Paramus, Roseland, Ridgefiled Park, Saddle River, Teaneck, Towaco, Totowa, Verona, Wayne, West Caldwell, West Orange, West Paterson, Woodland Park, and Wyckoff

Since we travel around Northeast Jersey we can also make arrangements to meet in Union, Westfield, Chatham, Clark, Summit, Bayonne, Ramey, Hoboken, Upper Saddle River, Morristown, Montvale, Bergenfield, Paramus, Ridgefield, Tenafly, Cranford, Bayonne, Park Ridge, Hillsdale, Wanque, Westfield, Jersey City, Pine Brook, Union City, North Bergen, Seacaucus, Hoboken, Seacaucus, Elizabeth, Newark, and Fort Lee

Besides the SAT I test we also teach

*SAT II subject tests in European History, Human Geography, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Music Theory, Psychology, U.S. Government and Politics, U.S. History, and World History. We also prepare students for the ISEE (Independent School Entrance Exam, the SSAT, the HSPT (High School Placement Test), the PSAT, GED, GRE and ASVAB tests.

For SAT prep we serve Essex, Passaic, Bergen, Hudson, Morris, Sussex, & Union Counties