Youth empowerment is at the center of my work, so students not only achieve a result they’re proud of but also and gain self-confidence, self-awareness, and self-advocacy skills along the way. How we get there includes learning the “why” behind many of the concepts they have learned in school, filling in the gaps where they may not have learned something in school, strengthening their reading comprehension, and developing reliable tools that they can draw on to stay calm, confident, and focused in any performance scenario. My goal for students is that this experience be one more data point to demonstrate that they can take on challenges and gain enrichment from them—and succeed.
My test prep program is structured around what I believe are the “four ingredients to success”:
- Format: Building a student’s strong familiarity with the format of the exam to increase predictability of the test-taking experience—we do this by using retired official exams and taking note of features of the exam as we go through it
- I am up to date on recent changes to the SAT (as of March 2024) as well as the upcoming changes to the ACT (coming spring 2025)—and so is my curriculum
- Content: This is where students and I will likely spend the bulk of our time. We’ll take a ground-up, judgment-free, comprehensive approach to making sure students have all the content knowledge they need to succeed
- Also, we’ll develop a set of reading comprehension tools that will help make even the most boring passage of all time a little bit more interesting by identifying key features that will assist students in developing a deeper understanding
- Performance tools: We will examine the relationship between stress and performance (as stress goes up, performance goes up…and then down! it’s called the Yerkes-Dodson curve) and learn tools to maintain calm, confidence, and focus
- Practice: Practice is built in and essential to our work together. Students will practice via sessions, in-between session homework, and proctored mock exams on Saturdays. My job is to not only make the exam predictable but also help students develop proficiency, which I define as “being able to apply what you know to something you’ve never seen before.” Practice will help students toward that end—exams are known to throw the occasional curveballs, and my students are prepared to handle them calmly and confidently
- Students and I will, during our work together, frame mock exams as effective, essential steps toward progress as opposed to reliable metrics of progress
Udelson Tutoring 