Knowledge is Power

Investing in private academic tutoring can be a difficult decision. While specific types of tutoring may have unique benefits, certain aspects of the student-tutor relationship are essential. When looking into tutoring, be sure to keep these important ideas in mind to ensure that student needs are being met:

1. Student-Tutor Rapport: The relationship that develops between student and tutor is one of the greatest benefits of private tutoring. After becoming familiar with a student, a tutor should be able to approach his/her student in a way that fits with the student’s learning style. It can be extremely beneficial for students to receive different perspectives on difficult material, and tutors can complement the lessons students receive in school and present material in more understandable ways. Worthwhile tutors should also be enthusiastic and nurturing when dealing with students, pushing them to succeed while offering support through challenging classes. Students often prefer working with a tutor rather than getting help from parents or teachers, and this enthusiasm and willingness to work can make a big difference for many students. When matched with tutors who they relate to and enjoy working with, students often become more passionate and engaged in their studies, significantly improving classroom performance.

2. A Nurturing Environment: To ensure that students are getting the most out of their academic tutoring, the tutoring environment must be conducive to learning. Many students struggle in the classroom because it is a noisy, distracting atmosphere, but tutoring should be designed to limit these distractions as much as possible. Tutors should create a quiet and welcoming environment that encourages easily-distracted students to focus and shy students to ask questions they hesitate to bring up in a classroom. An effective tutoring environment can be of particular importance to students with learning disabilities such as Attention Deficit Disorder who may have an especially tough time in conventional classroom settings.

3. Academic Expertise: Whether a student needs intensive help on a specific topic (e.g. Algebra, Spanish, or Chemistry) or just general support with homework and other assignments, tutors must have mastery of the material being covered. Tutors who know material well can help guide students finish make-up work, complete difficult assignments, and prepare for tests and exams. Unlike school teachers, who must balance time and energy commitments to the rest of a student’s class, private tutors can focus intensely on a specific student’s needs as they work through material together. Academic tutors can also move students through significant amounts of material relatively quickly, making studying and homework time more efficient for busy students.

4. Communication: Perhaps most importantly, it is important to have clear and open communication with an academic tutor. Tutors obviously work closely with students, but they should also be willing to communicate regularly with parents, teachers, and counselors to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that students are getting the help they really need. Regular conversations and progress reports can help keep parents in the loop; tutors should be willing to help facilitate communication amongst everyone involved in a student’s education.

Families who can find tutoring options that satisfy these characteristics typically see their students establish tutoring relationships and improve academically. Knowing what to look for in a tutor can make it much easier for families to find tutors who will help their students achieve outstanding results in the classroom.

This article is written by Ted Mosbi on behalf of Georgetown Learning Centers. GLC provides Academic Tutoring & SAT Prep Courses in Northern Virginia (Mclean, Great Falls) and Charlottesville. For more details, please visit learnglc.com

It was not very long ago that the majority of buttons had a shiny, iridescent quality. In fact, take a look at shirts and dresses as recent as the 1970’s, and you might notice these luminous buttons. They are made of mother-of-pearl, which is the inner shell layer of certain mollusks, and is made out of nacre - the same stuff that pearls are made of. Before the late 1800’s, buttons were predominately an import item in the United States. That is, until John Frederick Boepple came along.

Born into a German button-making factory, Boepple honed his craft and expertise in Germany and Austria until 1887, when he reached a big turning point in his life. Prior to that time in 1887, stiffer and stiffer tariffs were being placed on imported material. Since Boepple used predominately imported shells and horns to make his buttons, this hurt his business very badly. To make matters worse, his wife died suddenly. With nothing left to live for, Boepple headed straight to the one place that he knew beautiful shells were abundant and untapped - the Mississippi River in the United States.

He had a hard road ahead. He had no friends or contacts in the U.S. and he spoke no English. He was focused on the task at hand, however, and even while he performed odd jobs for farmers and business owners in Illinois, he learned enough English to get around, and started collecting odds and ends of old machinery to start constructing a lathe with which to make buttons.

Lucky for Boepple, the MicKinley Tariff of 1890 echoed the stiff import tariffs that had been imposed just a few years earlier in Europe. Until this McKinley Tariff, people had been importing buttons from Europe. For the dual reason that the button industry was suffering in Europe because of the unavailability of inexpensive materials and the fact that it became even more expensive in the U.S. to order the already scant amount of buttons available in Europe, the U.S. was ripe for its own button industry.

Boepple realized he needed to strike while the iron was hot, and promptly moved to Muscatine, Iowa, where the Mississippi River had many thick-shelled mollusks for a fledgling button-maker. He built himself the best equipment he could muster out of the odds and ends he had collected, and started making buttons. He was very good at it, and word got around that mother-of-pearl buttons could be gotten in the U.S. and for a reasonable price.

Two investors, I.A. Kerr and William Molis, took an interest in Boepple’s tiny business, and bolstered him enough to create the very first freshwater pearl button factory in the U.S. and even the world, as European button-makers did not make the buttons in factories. Unfortunately for Boepple, Kerr and Molis did not understand the delicacy required of working with mother-of-pearl, and purchased equipment ill-suited to the process. They were anxious to mass-produce the buttons, which Boepple saw basically as works of art. The alliance soon crumbled, and while Kerr and Molis’s factory stayed open and produced buttons, Boepple made buttons out of his home, and opened a new factory that ran the way he wanted it to.

Muscatine thrived with this new business, and by 1905 produced more than 30% of all the buttons in the world at that time. By 1897 there were 53 button companies in Muscatine alone, not to mention the many other button factories along the Mississippi River. It wasn’t very long before someone figured out a good way to automate the creation of mother-of-pearl buttons, thus making Boepple’s old-world craftmanship (and the time it took to make a button) obsolete.

Boepple stopped making buttons, and concentrated on a freelance business that bought shells for other button companies. He soon realized that the quality of shells had diminished, and was dismayed to find out that this “button boom” had depleted the Mississippi River’s natural supply of mussels. He went to work for the Fairport Biological Station, which was an initiative founded by Congress in 1908 to find out how to propagate mussels for this lucrative American industry.

Boepple modified the tool used most frequently to catch mussels - making it so it spared the younger mussels to allow them to grow bigger and multiply. While he was performing the duties associated with this job, he cut his fot on a broken mussel shell. Just a few months later, he died of blood poisoning in a Muscatine hospital.

To this day, Boepple is credited with the creation of an industry that provided Muscatine with jobs and income for many years.

Piper Smith is the VP of Marketing for Museum Way Pearls, a leading provider of pearl jewelry such as Tahitian pearl necklaces and pearl stud earrings. Museum Way Pearls can be found online at: MuseumWayPearls.com .

A woman is the epitome of strength and resilience, symbolization of the perfect balances of senses and a unique power to endure the best and the worst of life. To understand a woman is difficult, but yet the most difficult part is to comprehend how she leads her life taking care of each and every aspect, giving attention to all the minute details, of her family, her friends and all those who are close to her. Women trying to make their mark in the professional front, juggle their careers and their family life and still try to achieve single-handedly the bitter-sweet taste of success, which bestows her the tinge of joy. The National Association of Professional Women aims at providing a sound network system to working women as a platform to exchange ideas, and interact with each other on different issues and seek advices and support.

National Association of Professional Women or NAPW is developing into a network with a strong foundation and abounds with resources, services, advancement and career movements to develop women’s careers. NAPW is progressing into a full-fledged networking site broadcasting podcasts, keynote speeches, seminars, webinars and skills required for career enhancements with the only purpose of helping women to climb up the career ladders in their respective professions. NAPW is proud to have provided a diverse yet global forum exclusively dedicated to urge women from compatible backgrounds to come together to discuss and create relationships on personal, social and professional grounds.

NAPW does not only restrict to the networking aspect which even though is an important factor yet does not complete the entire meaning of why the forum has been organized. NAPW has been pushing itself still further and has been joining hands with charitable institutions that are very much concerned about women’s problems and issues, and understands the power enclosed in the folds of knowledge. They understand that it is not only important to celebrate the success of career women but also to promote those women who earnestly want to grow into real professionals in their career fronts. It is for this reason that NAPW has taken up the matter with sheer dedication and has decided to support five young women each year by providing financial aid of $1,000 to each of them, to ensure that the future generation of the womankind is not affected due to the lack of finances. The NAPW Rising Stars Education Scholarship is modeled in such a way so as to provide a medium for future career-oriented women to realize their educational goals and to encourage them to become professionally challenged so as to strive ahead to reach their career goals.

NAPW has specifically organized the Rising Stars Education Scholarship Program as an effort to support the daughters of the NAPW members, who need support and guidance to excel at their respective fields. It is strictly limited to applicants below 23 years of age who are either high-school seniors or enrolled for an undergraduate program and should possess a minimum of 3.5 GPA at the High school level and a GPA of 3.2 at the College level.

It is interesting to note that NAPW is intensely concerned about the growth of professional women and by providing this extra-ordinary network service, it not only offers the right information and direction but also helps women with similar backgrounds to come together and develop a bond both on the personal and professional fronts to understand the realities of the professional world.

Rashmi Menon takes great interest in the dedication shown by National Association of Professional Women towards uniting professional women and providing knowledge on the same grounds. Please check information on National Association of Professional Women to learn more about their scholarship plans.