Back to BasicsSouth Charlotte’s learning center ranks as

one of the busiest Huntington programs in U.S. (as published in South Charlotte Weekly, February 2003)

Are homework assignments and report cards throwing your family into a panic? Do you wonder why your child is struggling? Are you asking what you can do to get your child back on track?

More and more students are hitting the books for an hour or more after school. But they’re not doing their regular homework. Many are catching up on the fundamentals they missed in the classroom- most likely several years ago.

These basic skills are reading comprehension and organizational/study skills. At Huntington Learning Center in Tower Place Festival shopping center on Pineville-Matthews Road, kindergarteners are mastering phonics, fourth graders are tackling math problems and social studies, and eighth graders are pulling facts out of books for research papers.

“Huntington is a place where bright students learn how to be the best they can be,” said Jackie Pace, executive director and owner of the Huntington Learning Centers in both South Charlotte and Huntersville. “We’re not limited to underachieving, failing kids but mainly have good kids who are slipping through the cracks.”

Pace emphasizes that “good grades and high standardized test scores don’t always mean a child is ‘getting it’ at school.” She said that a student can be making straight A’s, or A’s and B’s but taking hours to do his homework. Or, students can be making good grades because they’re listening in class and doing their homework but nearly flunking tests.

“We have students from public schools and private schools – it doesn’t matter where a child goes to school,” said Pace, who has been in business for 13 years. “There’s always more than one student in a classroom. If there are five, 10, 20 or 35, not every child is going to master every skill at the time it is presented.”

The problem isn’t that the children aren’t being taught. “Instruction definitely is happening,” Pace stressed, “but teachers have to keep going. They can’t wait until the very last child gets it.”

A former teacher, Pace knows what goes on in the classroom and stays abreast of education trends. Huntington Learning Center employs 35 certified teachers from both public and private schools, and many have graduate degrees and more than 20 years teaching experience.

The South Charlotte and Huntersville centers serve about 150 students each, which makes them the busiest Huntington Learning Centers in the country, Pace said. Huntington was started in New Jersey in 1977 and now has 200 sites in 30 states. The South Charlotte center recently moved to Tower Place Festival to accommodate more students.

Pace said the success of her two centers doesn’t mean there’s an education problem in Charlotte, noting that other Huntington centers are struggling. Instead, she attributes it to “staffing, atmosphere and referrals.” She also said more parents are discovering the difference between traditional tutoring and the learning center alternative.

Reading between the lines“Basic tutoring is homework help,” said Pace. “With tutoring, the tutor does the work – he or she helps the

child figure out how to do the problem or outline the chapter.”At Huntington, however, students learn how to do the work themselves. Time at Huntington isn’t spent on

homework help. Instead, students learn how to study/learn using the center’s own textbooks. Homework is left at home.

“By the fourth grade, children are taking subjects, and they are supposed to be applying everything they’ve learned,” said Pace. “If they never learned the skills, when are they ever going to catch up?”

Students traditionally need help with math, but most children are missing upper-level reading skills. “Math is usually the first thing to show its ugly head,” said Pace. “But the underlying problem often is reading. We ask parents, ‘How is he with word problems? Can he follow directions? Does he understand the terminology?’”

She continued, “Reading comprehension is a common thread that runs through every subject. It’s the inferencing sequencing, cause and effect, drawing conclusions – this is where kids are falling apart.” Pace explained that a student may be able to pick out main ideas but not “read between the lines.”

The mother of a first grader said reading wasn’t “clicking” with her daughter in kindergarten. The child started Huntington last summer – going three times a week for an hour – and will be finished this spring. “Now, she’s reading and writing stories. It’s wonderful; she loves going and has a lot more confidence,” said the mom.

If writing is a problem, Pace said that students may be creative but can’t organize thoughts on paper. Or, they may struggle with spelling or sentence structure. Problems are compounded as the subject material gets tougher.

In the upper elementary and middle school years (and sometimes into high school), study skill problems emerge. Learning how to take notes, outline and study for a test are organizational skills. “Kids can be scoring 85 to 90 percent, but they can’t explain what’s in the book,” said Pace. One reason is the emphasis on end-of-grade testing. “We’re teaching children to take a standardized test but not how to study a book.”

The first step at Huntington is a skills assessment. “It could take 2-1/2 to 4-1/2 hours,” said Pace. “Each assessment is individualized for the student.” Parents are asked questions about their child’s study habits and attitudes toward school.

Then parents return to the center to go through a thorough evaluation of the test results. A plan for the child is discussed, and parents are given a time frame so they know what to expect.

Becoming an independent learnerHow long does it take for a student to catch up? The average student comes to Huntington several

afternoons a week for six to 12 months. “We tell parents, ‘When your child is finished at Huntington, we’d love to see her again if she needs us. But

we want her skills to be strong enough so that she doesn’t need us or need you,’” said Pace. “There is a definite end at Huntington.”

Vickie Penegar’s 16-year-old twins have always attended private schools. They currently attend Metrolina Christian Academy in Indian Trail. “They’ve always made A’s and B’s, but they never really did well on tests,” said Penegar, whose teens started Huntington last March when they initially failed the school’s entrance exam in math and writing.

“They’ve come up five grade levels, and I don’t have to help them with their homework anymore,” she continued. “We realized they were never really taught how to do things.”

Preparing for collegeWhat about getting ready for college? Does SAT preparation make a difference? “Yes and no,” said Pace.

“Most students are taking an SAT course. It is to a child’s disadvantage if he doesn’t have some kind of SAT preparation beforehand, because everybody else is doing it.” Pace said that with many juniors and seniors, Huntington works both on the student’s basic skills as well as SAT strategies.

“There are two things involved with the SAT: skills and strategy,” she explained. “Strategy isn’t worth two cents if a student doesn’t have the skills – test-taking instruction won’t work if the student’s vocabulary skills are too low. Any reputable SAT course is going to work if the skills are in place and the student does everything the instructor has told him or her to do.”

And, problems can arise once a student gets into college. Pace can recount several examples of students who found out that high school hadn’t prepared them for college level reading. “Memorization is a low-level skill,” said Pace. “In college, tests cover not only the lecture but also what’s in the textbook.” Often students do not have the technical reading skills, which include speed reading/skimming and pulling out the most important facts quickly.

“It happens a lot,” said Pace. “Kids are going through high school and making good grades because they show up for class and do their homework. They use the study guides and they memorize.” The scenario at the college level is much different: Students go to a lecture class on Monday, then are supposed to read a couple of chapters in the textbook by Wednesday and on Friday they’re tested on the first 150 pages. “One of the things we work on with middle school and high school students is speed reading, so that they know how to get in there and grab the meat out of the book.”

Two summers ago, a young South Charlotte woman came to Huntington following her sophomore year at N.C. State. “She was very smart – she had done well in high school because she listened well and could memorize. But she had never learned how to study a textbook.”

Pace concluded. “Our goal is to enable a student to be an independent learner. A good grade on a standardize test doesn’t always mean she can do it on her own… I sometimes ask parents, ‘Are you going to be her roommate at college?’”