The Regular Reflections of our Founder and President, Claire Russell

January 1, 2023

I’m so excited by what we’ve learned from test-takers this year! In my Student Interview with each test prep student, we review their SAT and ACT test-taking experiences to discover their test-taking tendencies and responses. For example, some students speed through tests, thinking they must finish; others linger on questions, second-guessing themselves. Many students stress about the time on a standardized test; some get so nervous they blank out. Students develop myriad responses to the pressure cooker of tests. In discovering how a student responds to tests, we understand how to help them tap their talents to become a calm, expert test-taker.

Schools make students take tests from the time they are young, but they never teach students how to succeed in test-taking. As a result, test anxiety is epidemic. Our students mask their anxiety in school, but they suffer profoundly. Because I ask, students reveal to me their extreme reactions, including anxious thinking that spirals into panic, GI distress, shaking, sleeplessness, and fight-or-flight reactions. Regularly, I see the look of relief on a student’s face when I tell them that we can alleviate their test anxiety: with mindful test prep, we can put them back in control of their test-taking. Watching this process unfold in an SAT/ACT or SSAT/ISEE test prep program can be thrilling.

In RTC test prep, we help students develop a healthier relationship with test-taking while giving them the college-readiness skills that ACT and SAT demand. We are excited to help our students achieve scores four to six times the national average score gains on both SAT and ACT! As the CEO of ACT, Janet Godwin, said to me this summer, “Claire, that’s great college prep!” Exactly.

We know students can’t escape test-taking, so we believe in helping them achieve where they must perform. That’s why we’re proud to be the only tutoring company in the country that provides mindfulness coaching in our test prep

programs. We understand that proven mind-body practices help students regulate their nervous systems; that means they can be in control of taking their best calm and focused test anywhere, no matter what. RTC test prep prepares students to succeed in college and life beyond.

More than that, our students leave test prep happier and more confident young people. For example, when our student Karina came to us for test prep, she saw tests as a pressure cooker where every question was an opportunity for failure. Karina would anxiously hurry through questions because she worried about finishing. Often, Karina got stuck and second-guessed herself. She regularly panicked and blanked out, especially in math. Tests made Karina so nervous that she couldn’t breathe. Karina’s family called her tight chest her “mental asthma.”

ACT was Karina’s test. When we started test prep, Karina’s mindfulness coach began to work with Karina on her breath. That first week, Karina used the new breathing technique she had learned in coaching while taking her school tests. She discovered it made a huge difference, especially during math. Karina aced all three exams.

This was exciting progress for Karina, who had been blanking out on math tests for so many years that she believed she wasn’t good at math. Both Karina’s tutor and her mindfulness coach helped Karina build her confidence in her math talent over time.

Karina was a strong reader and a fast, energetic test-taker. Her tutor taught her to be focused and patient. Her mindfulness coach provided Karina the support she needed to question her narratives and realize that she wasn’t competing against anyone but herself, for her own achievement and satisfaction. Over time, Karina’s anxiety about test prep grew into excitement. She was all-in on ACT prep, asking for extra practice.

At the end of test prep, Karina reached her score goal, a seven-point increase over her ACT baseline score on a scale of 36! Karina achieved a 5-point increase in Reading to an amazing 32, and an incredible 7-point improvement in Math. Now when we see her, Karina is a different student: all smiles and confidence.

Karina’s mother Cindy is so proud of her daughter’s growth in the past year. She remarks, “Karina gained a confidence and a calm that transcended the standardized test. Whereas the prospect of testing and college applications seemed so daunting, she now approached it all with a quiet confidence that made the entire process fun and exciting. Working with Claire and her team helped Karina unlock her potential, and wherever she lands after high school, she knows that she has the tools to handle any challenge that comes her way.”

At RTC, we invest in helping students become happier and more successful in test-taking and beyond. We are excited about the difference that mindful learning can make in the lives of our students, and we can’t wait to provide more transformative tutoring in 2023!

January 1, 2022 – This month’s reflection is from RTC Tutor Jacob Ginsberg.

A Special Tutoring Relationship

When I started working with David last July, he was staying with his grandparents in Colorado so that he could train at high altitude. He’s a competitive runner, and with plans to run at the best D1 university possible, he wanted to push himself over the summer. A rising senior, David knew that running 70 miles a week with less oxygen in the air would help set him up for a stellar fall season. I knew immediately after meeting him how focused and disciplined he was, and I could tell he would apply himself to ACT prep. After a few lessons, I realized I was lucky to be working with a driven, mature, intelligent young man.

Working with David highlighted one of my favorite things about tutoring and specifically the way I approach teaching: I work collaboratively with my students. We work through problems together, and I encourage them to take ownership and control their own learning process. David loved learning the ins and outs of the ACT and developing his own best approach. While I encouraged David early on in his test prep program, he inspired me to start running. Slowly but surely, we both improved in our new disciplines with the help of the other’s expertise.

The funny thing was, we realized that much of the advice we’d give each other was the same. “Stay patient,” I’d say, when David didn’t do as well on a homework as he wanted to. “Even a few miles is a great run,” he’d say, when I was disappointed in my pacing or how far I’d been able to run that particular day. There’s give and take and collaboration in any ACT program, but this was unique in the way David was able to advise and coach me as a runner while I mentored him as a test-taker. I got more and more into running, and David’s ACT approached; with encouragement from him, I decided to register for the Philadelphia Half Marathon.

We drew more and more comparisons between ACT and running. You have to pace yourself and start slowly — if you burn all your energy early, you’ll run out at the end. You have to stay patient and consistent and fight through plateaus. Pace yourself. Breathe. Before the race and before his test, we gave each other the same advice: trust your training. You’ve put in the hours. Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Stay loose.

In the end, we both fell a bit short of the goals we set. I finished my half marathon a few minutes slower than I’d hoped for, and David ended with a point or two lower than he’d hoped for. Here, the relationship we’d developed was so supportive, as we helped each other see that we both had still accomplished things we should be proud of. I completed my first half marathon! And David improved his ACT score by an awesome 4 points!

We both learned a lot about perseverance, and we finished David’s test prep program with accomplishments to build on. What’s more, we’re leaving with a unique tutor-student relationship. I know that I can get advice for David when I tackle my next big race, and he knows he can rely on me as a mentor as he moves through the rest of the college application process and going forward in his life.

November 1, 2021

Growing in Thanks

At RTC, we are so very thankful for our families, students, and tutors who make what we do here so impactful and rewarding. I started RTC because I wanted a chance to invest in the futures of students who believed that they could reach their dreams with hard work. Every day, I see students invest in themselves by reaching that next tier of college with a higher test score or a better college essay, earning a better grade by working through particularly challenging subjects like Chemistry or Calculus, or pushing to the next level of understanding simply because they love learning.

RTC now has a staff of over two dozen carefully selected tutors and mindfulness coaches across the country. Our tutors are so gifted and diverse in their talents and backgrounds; what’s more, they are themselves passionate lifelong learners who genuinely want to help each student succeed on the path to their goals. Erin and I have weekly tutor calls with each of our active tutors and coaches, during which we check in to make sure our students are succeeding in our tutoring programs. We also collaborate and share ideas about how to make a tutor’s students more successful. So often, I pass one tutor’s ideas to another tutor. RTC is a teaching cooperative in that way: “Here’s this great strategy I use – take it and run with it!”

I’m grateful that I get to witness tutors who love teaching and students who relish learning collaborating together every day. Our students move me to tears when I read their poignant college essays, when they call me to celebrate having been accepted to their dream schools, and when they and their parents write us letters of thanks for the skills they learned in test prep that have enabled them to soar in college. I have so many happy days in my work.

As we close out this eventful year with the last newsletter of 2021, I offer gratitude for our dedicated students, for our wonderful staff who have chosen to make RTC their teaching home, and for our families who have trusted us with their children. RTC has grown only because you have told your friends and families about us, and I humbly thank you all for sharing the special work we are doing here at RTC. You are what has made RTC a success in 2021, and we appreciate your ongoing support so that we can continue helping more children grow, learn, and achieve in the coming year!

It seems a little early to say this as the weather is just getting crisp, but may you have a wonderful holiday season! We look forward to working with your student in 2022. We say this every day, and we mean it: Your child’s future matters to us.

September 1, 2021

Continuing Virtual Tutoring at RTC

At RTC, we have always done 1-to-1 virtual tutoring. From the start of our company, we have had students all over the United States, and internationally as far away as London, Latvia, and Sri Lanka. We have always known that 1-to-1 tutoring is customized, connected, and personal. We had data to show that our virtual test prep programs were just as successful as our in-person test prep programs long before the pandemic started.

Of course, the pandemic changed everything, and all our tutoring went virtual. This was a real test for our tutors: could they do everything virtually?  The answer was a resounding “Yes!” Our in-person tutors adapted quickly, and some of them tell me now that they never imagined how much fun it would be to work collaboratively with a student on an online whiteboard! While so many of our students were feeling alienated in classrooms where they could not access their teachers for help, they found the exact opposite in their RTC lessons: tutors who were there for them, who taught to their specific needs, and who could answer all their questions. We had students see some of the highest ACT Superscore gains ever in virtual programs over the past year and a half – as many as 9 and 10 points – all from virtual tutoring.

After offering limited in-person tutoring this summer, we recognize that the dangers of the Delta variant have made in-person tutoring unrealistic for the near future. We understand that we need to prioritize both our tutors’ and our students’ safety, and so we have returned to tutoring entirely virtually at RTC. 

We feel very confident and comfortable that virtual tutoring can provide our students with everything they need in their learning, because we have seen our tutors teach everything from early Reading to AP Calculus to Mindfulness virtually in the past year.  We look forward to connecting with your student soon in a virtual 1-2-1 lesson!