The Student Mastery Program

Daryl Capuano and his team not only changed my son's academic performance, they changed his life.
-- J.H. Mystic, CT.

East Lyme, CT Parents:
Are Your Children Reaching Their Potential?

East Lyme, CT is a wonderful place to raise children and its school system is outstanding.

The one challenge: with so many excellent students, many very bright East Lyme High School students feel a bit intimidated and start losing motivation.

Our mission is to empower every student to reach his or her full potential through education.

What does that mean?

At the most basic level, we are teaching students content related to their academic subject.

We teach students how to do a circle problem in geometry.

At the next level, we are teaching students concepts that will help them with all similar problems in that academic subject.

We teach students to do all types of geometry problems by showing them problem solving principles.

Still higher, we are teaching students to enjoy the subject more.

We reframe the student's dislike of a subject into a challenge from which they will derive satisfaction.

We then move students towards embracing education as a means to greater ends.

We motivate students to strive for goals -- both external (achievement-oriented) and internal (psychological satisfaction).

WE INSPIRE STUDENTS TO REACH THEIR FULL HUMAN POTENTIAL

A lofty goal, to be sure, but that's the ultimate aim of teaching.

Our greatest successes with students from East Lyme, CT has been transforming their general attitudes towards productive endeavors (school, work, life in general). If we can get our students to care about building their lives, then that positive attitude can lead to a lifetime of success.

As for school, learning is the real end goal. Learning is the ultimate measure of academic success. Gaining knowledge and developing skills are the most important aspects of school.

However, scholastic performance is the most tangible measure of academic success. And measurable performance is what colleges examine most closely when determining admissions. The process for getting better grades is a mystery to many parents and students. Many parents believe that their children’s grades do not reflect their true potential.

They’re often right.

More on How Your Children Can Reach Their Potential

Creating Self-Directed Students

Self-motivation is the first key. . Most students study to avoid nagging. The Student Mastery program’s first priority is moving students from acting solely due to outer-direction (studying only because they are told to do so) to self-direction (performing to their potential for their own reasons).

The immediate desired end result — no more need to nag — is good for the whole family.

The even more desirable higher end objective — learning to love learning — leads to a lifetime of success.

We're often asked, "How did you help change our child so dramatically?"

A deep understanding of psychological patterns helps us to uncover each student's unique motivational triggers.

Parents usually attempt to motivate students by asking themselves: "What would motivate me?" If your student-child were exactly like you, and the same age as you, then the question might lead to effective insights.

But given the age and personality differences between parent and child, the better question is: "What would motivate my child?"

Over time the parent-child relationship is so immersed in psychological baggage that parents often exhaust their ability to inspire their children. Parents are conflicted by the need to evaluate (you could be doing this better) and the need to love (I love you regardless). A parent’s well-intentioned attempts to help is usually interpreted by the child as nagging.

At this stage, the child has tuned out the parent, who only gets more and more frustrated.

This is the point where The Learning Consultants can best help. Our method involves discovering what motivates each unique younger person at their stage in their development.

We have also discovered common personality and psychological patterns well beyond the obvious among young adults. For this reason, we understand how these patterns might play out and how we can intervene effectively. Our most fulfilling successes have come from helping students develop their own self-awareness and desire to achieve success.

Best Practices Are the Secret to Success

Motivation is a critical issue, but best practices are a critical — and often missing — ingredient for academic excellence.

Many bright students do not know the best practices for school performance. Just as there are best practices for most every work process, there are methods — best practices — for getting good grades.

Top students know these methods. How? Some have intuitively figured out what works. Some have been taught best practices. Some are just lucky that their natural working processes are also excellent studying methods.

We have developed a set of best practices for each significant area of student life to help them maximize their time and effort:

1) Motivation

2) Classroom Performance

3) Daily Studying (including Time Management)

4) Tests/Projects

Holistic Framework

Most efforts aimed at getting better grades usually focus on subject specific tutoring. This is an excellent step and The Learning Consultants' offerings provide, encourage, and work in conjunction with any such tutoring.

The Student Mastery program, however, was created for those students who:

1) could benefit from a more holistic framework for practices that are useful in all subjects and,

2) would like long-lasting academic performance lessons designed to endure throughout their academic careers. While we offer a best practices program for getting better grades, the real hope of the program is that success in school will build a greater appreciation for a lifetime of learning.

At the very least, students and parents are delighted by the simple fact that their daily battles over studying substantially decrease, if they don’t disappear altogether.

Customized For Your Student-Child

The Learning Consultants program has been strategically created and customized to adjust to each student’s needs and goals.

The creation of the Student Mastery program involved review and analysis of an enormous amount of literature on the subject of school performance, as well as a personal examination of what processes have most contributed to improvement from the thousands of students we have taught.

The end result is a program designed to help students maximize their potential for getting better grades.

Our is divided into distinct lessons but with the view that every program should be individually tailored with customized lessons for each student.

For example, some students “zone out” in class. We help them develop better practices for note-taking and classroom engagement.

Other students have difficulty with assigned reading. We help them with identifying which sections of the material deserve greater focus.

Most students simply want immediate help to deal with mid-terms or finals. In these cases, the working material students receive stems from their current classes. The lessons, modified to student need, are specifically designed to help students prepare for finals.

And it isn’t just what students need or want. Every student is unique, with his or her own personality and style. Most teachers and tutors spend little time differentiating what works best for each individual student. At the Learning Consultants, we do.

That’s what makes us and our students so successful.