According to Mark A. Carey, founder and tutor of Kaulele Education Services in Princeville, private, one-on-one tutoring may be just the tonic for homes engaged in regular combat when it’s time to do homework.
Sometimes, a mentor like a private tutor can help a child be successful, achieve to his or her ability level, and make homework a pleasant household chore that ends the parent-versus-child battle when it’s time to put pencil to paper, said Carey.
The company (“Kaulele” is Hawaiian for “to soar” or “take flight”), run by Carey alone out of a Princeville Shopping Center office, has 10 Kaua’i students from Po’ipu to the north shore.
It recently celebrated its first year in business here, though Carey maintains four tutors and a thriving tutoring business in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A part-time tutor since 1976 and full-time tutor since 1986, Carey, 47 and single, still tutors several Silicon Valley students, electronically, and visits them four times a year for face-to-face interaction.
When he left California to relocate here, his business there had a one- to two-year wait list of students wishing his company’s services.
He left the thriving Bay Area business to rough it on Kaua’i after finally buying land at Kalihiwai Ridge after vacationing here for about a decade. The home he built there was intended for his retirement years, but the lure of Kaua’i was too strong.
To get his name, business and talents known, and to give back to the island he feels has given so much to him, he has offered his services free to several Kaua’i families.
In fact, half of the 10 students he tutors here pay no fee for his services. Normally, he charges $95 an hour. Income from the California portion of his business allows him to survive here while offering scholarships to several Kaua’i families.
Working with the California students, Carey attempted to use the latest video technology to provide real-time tutoring. But when technology crossing thousands of miles of open ocean caused the audio to be a bit out of synch with the picture, that plan was dropped in favor of e-mail, instant messaging, faxing, and telephone contact.
“We’re really good at the phone thing,” he said, with Carey developing experience in being able to tell the difference between a long pause that means the student in thinking and a quiet gap in conversation that means he or she is stuck.
He also can hear in the background if the student is typing away at a keyboard.
Carey holds a master’s degree in special education from San Francisco State University, and a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Antioch College in Ohio. He also has other post-graduate training, and special training to identify learning disabilities and abilities.
A family should consider a tutor if a student is having difficulty in a particular subject. On Kaua’i, his students have all been successful, he said.
Such success can sometimes be the difference between family harmony and disunity. If a student who had been battling with a parent at homework time and through the help of a tutor blossoms into a more confident student, the war at home may be over, he said.
A child needs to achieve at his ability level, and sometimes that means several levels above current grade level. He uses his California experience as an example. He called “between-the-cracks kids” those who weren’t getting any special attention because they were performing at grade level in all subjects.
That means successful students, right?
Maybe, but those students performing at grade level don’t get any special attention that might identify them as having either learning abilities – which if nurtured could result in them performing three grade levels or more above their current grade – or learning disabilities, which if identified could also allow them to further excel, Carey explained.
Carey has also seen the good and the bad about a popular form of education on Kaua’i, that being home schooling. Sometimes it’s home schooling, and sometimes it’s “home free,” cruising the beach and not getting the kind of education that will be valuable later in life, he said.
His business offers educational evaluation, consultation, computer instruction, summer programs, tutoring for visitors, writing skills for adults, homework environment planning, and more.
For more information, please call 826-1544, fax 826-1581, e-mail ioioi@aol.com, or see the Web site, www.qwc.com.
Business Editor Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
