real academic growth

---

At Hearts and Minds Learning Center, our goal isn't simply to help students finish tonight's homework or survive the next test.

We identify the underlying skills holding a student back, teach those skills systematically, and help students rebuild both academic ability and confidence.

Our students who follow our high frequency model commonly achieve 1–3 grade levels of growth in targeted reading, writing, or math skills within 3–6 months.*

Educational research has consistently shown that high-quality tutoring can accelerate student learning.

At Hearts and Minds, we build upon many of the things research tells us make tutoring effective—targeted instruction, identifying learning gaps, appropriately matched instruction, high-quality feedback, and monitoring progress.

When teaching our kids, we consider their relationship to learning, obstacles in mindset, the areas of need and work in best practices that help rapidly grow the neural pathways that lead to strengths.  

Many students who come to Hearts and Minds have already received tutoring.

They've practiced more.

They work harder. 

They've been told to read more, study carefully, slow down, pay attention, or just keep trying.

And yet, they're still struggling.

Because if we haven't identified why a student is struggling, simply giving them more practice with the thing they struggle with may not solve the problem.

At Hearts and Minds, we look beneath the academic symptom. We are studying and addressing the whole child.

Relationship:

Learning becomes much more difficult when a student feels defeated, anxious, frustrated, overwhelmed, or convinced that they "just aren't good at school." These thoughts form a negative relationship to learning.

We begin by creating connection, emotional safety, and an environment where students can experience success again. Rehabilitating the child's self-perception evolves their relationship to everything else. 

Readiness:

We observe learning-readiness factors that may affect academic performance, including academic gaps, developmental readiness, visual tracking, eye teaming, visual-motor skills, a student's relationship to tasks increasing in difficulty and other observable patterns. 

When appropriate, we strengthen foundational skills such as phonemic awareness, decoding, language development, fluency, working memory, attention, and executive-function demands. 

Skill Growth for Capability:

We don't simply teach the curriculum assigned to a student's age or grade.

We determine where the student's actual skill level begins to break down—and teach from there.

Instruction is explicit, targeted, scaffolded, and continually adjusted according to the student's performance.

Targeted Instruction built for transformation:

The goal isn't to create a student who needs tutoring forever.

The goal is mastery.

Students learn to transfer their skills into increasingly independent reading, writing, mathematics, studying, problem-solving, and classroom performance.