A Sylvan Learning Center Review

by Ray Grant

While I have no affiliation with or professional or personal grudges against Sylvan Learning Center, I do have an awareness of what it takes to operate a successful tutoring system in general and after school tutoring program in particular. As an associate prof. of English and colleague to an ESL professor who enlisted me to help him open and run an after school tutoring business, I have found that most important (most effective) is the learner-center model and the reinforcement of academic protocol techniques. Well, this sounds like a lot of gobbledy gook, if you are looking for details about Sylvan Learning Center, so I will shut up about pedagogy and offer you some specific information, instead.

Sylvan Learning Center personalizes by customizing a program for each individual learner. The trained and credentialed staff of teachers creates special assignments and study tools, such as handouts with erasable plastic covers, that cater to the specific needs of each student in his or her discipline area where he or she needs targeted help.

The tutoring methods are academically sound, based on years and multiple studies and practice; and those methods mimic and/or reinforce the process each child learns by in his or her regular school classes. As well, the Sylvan Learning Center officials confer with schools and teachers, in some cases, to ensure a more seamless learning approach and process.

You have probably seen, heard, or read about Sylvan Learning Center’s Sylvan Advantage: the teachers perform diagnostics, to identify each child’s areas of strength and areas of need, then they proceed with the aforementioned customization, using handouts, texts, and computer-assisted learning tools (hard- and software) to build learning skills, enhance knowledge, and increase confidence levels…encouraging an esteemed attitude that subsequently results in higher success rates in school, or vice versa.

In addition, Sylvan is now not only in-person, in-center, but is available as support online. That online support is live and also one-on-one, but affords the busy or “stranded” parent(s) the luxury of the same support his and/or her child’s academic needs get satisfied by in the brick and mortar center.