Help for learning is in our midst

What started as one 4th grade student at a kitchen table has become a service for the entire Cypress community, as well as Tomball, Waller, Magnolia, and even Katy and Houston. Built on the premise of serving "people" rather than clients and doing it individually with heart, Texas Educational Consultants has grown from that one student a week to over a hundred. Situated on Mueschke Rd., right in the heart of Cypress, TEC is easily accessible and about as opposite from the chain and commercial tutoring facilities as possible. Located on a beautiful wooded lot, you feel the calming environment the minute you enter the parking lot, and it carries over into the building shared with Cookin' With Kim and Lotus in Bloom Healing. After being greeted and offered water and a snack, all clients spend the first 5 to 7 minutes playing a game. This small activity has garnered huge rewards. In addition to starting the session with something fun and upbeat, it helps build a relationship between the tutor and the child. It allows the child to "let go of" anything negative they came in with (from an angry teacher, a bad grade, an upset parent, or getting stopped by the train at Fry!). All games have an educational purpose: memory, math skills, eye-hand coordination, comprehension, and other cognitive functioning. While the mission has remained the same for 12 years, the services have grown and changed to meet the community's needs. Currently, TEC offers individual tutoring for kindergarten through age 55. We joke that it is only because we haven't had anyone older than that yet! Content-driven small group classes are added during the school year as needed: usually in the upper-level maths and sciences, such as Calculus and Physics. Additionally, we have small group and individual tutoring for SAT/ ACT, help with college entrance essays, resumes, college and career counseling, and help parents navigate parent-teacher conferences, IEPs, and long-term planning. With the post-Covid age upon us, Texas Educational Consultants has adjusted and adapted along with everyone else. Whereas four or more years ago, the typical tutoring clientele would be primarily students who were failing or in danger of failing, more and more people are coming for other reasons. On the elementary level, we help many young children who missed crucial building blocks in reading and math while everyone was home and/or working online. Time marched along, but those critical gaps make the continuation of learning in the classroom challenging. Before Covid, classroom teachers dealt with a range of abilities, but in the past year, the wide extreme from one level of reading or math to the other end of the spectrum has made teaching and reaching each student's needs almost impossible. We're here to help! We communicate with the schools and teachers to ensure we are following what is taught and effectively translating that to our students. Often just sitting in a quieter area with one adult for an hour dramatically affects a child's success. More often than not, the confidence and enthusiasm emoted by the tutor and absorbed by the child make the biggest change. At the middle and high school levels, the number of clients who typically earn all A's and B's has risen dramatically in the past three years. Students know they are not getting everything they need in their classes to be successful in college. Our SAT and ACT prep sessions have garnered the most referrals. TEC teaches not only the content (which in the reading and English portions looks quite different than what is done in the classroom) but also tricks and tools for increasing scores on the standardized entrance tests. "I've learned more in one hour of English here than I did in an entire year of school," said one client at the end of a group session last fall. Texas Educational Consultants looks forward to celebrating the 12th year of serving our community. As always, we will continue to offer discounts to our first responders and military, financially support our local high school theatre departments and provide scholarships as needed.