C2 Education Tutoring Model

How I couldn't cut it like an assassin

I want to describe a minor point about Cole Allen, the accused third attempted assassin that was stopped at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He describes himself as a teacher, but that’s not quite accurate. I can allow him to call himself that in a general sense, but not in this context.

C2 Education is a chain of centers that predominantly prepares students for standardized tests like the SAT and ACT and also selective high schools. Before I go further, I believe C2 Education does what it claims—improves students’ test scores and overall achievement in school. All those banners on the walls announcing the schools the kids were accepted into can’t be lies.

But as an actual employee that held Allen’s role for a brisk 3 days, I can say that I didn’t feel like a teacher, let alone a tutor.

The training they give you is not trivial. There are several live virtual practice sessions on top of video lessons and written assignments. Early in the training you learn the “teaching” model: you attend to up to 3 students at a time for a 2-hour session, alternating your focus to each one several times. During the training I didn’t consider how difficult that would be for me; I was just convinced that this was a highly effective way to help more students than a one-on-one dynamic could.

What was really difficult was the lack of preparation afforded the tutors. Because we were paid by the hour, we couldn’t take the work home or spend too much time outside the actual sessions. So we were given I think 5 or 10 minutes for prep for each student.

That doesn’t seem bad until you consider the complex spreadsheet we all shared and maintained that logged each student’s progress. We had to tailor that day’s session based on whatever was accomplished by the last tutor (whether that was you or not). There was a recommended sequence to follow; well, during the training there was, but my peers didn’t quite always follow it. In addition, they had several series of books to keep track of for each subject based on students’ diagnostic tests when they came into the program.

For final measure, I chose to tutor reading as well as math (my go-to subject). Although my career is writing, I wasn’t familiar with all the concepts they teach for reading comprehension and analysis. I internalized them for sure, but now they’re written out plainly in a book I just opened and now I had to tutor students to it!

Those three days were miserable because I was so sure I wasn’t helping the students and I wasn’t achieving nearly what I should have. I spent too much time focused on the clock to make sure each student had their deserved time.

This just increased my respect for those other tutors. They were all young academics with enough energy to juggle 10 students at once.

I’m confident I’m not violating C2’s confidentiality agreement. Any kid could go home and explain that there are 2 other kids with him and I didn’t reveal the actual breakdown of a session.

I hated to give up so soon, but my stomach and nerves couldn’t handle it. I like working with a single student for an hour, learning how she thinks and communicating in kind. And not sharing her with a pool of tutors.

Have you worked at C2 yourself? What do you think of the 3-1 tutoring model?