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).

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

Our greatest successes with students from Shoreline, CT and Southeastern CT have 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.

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.

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 and Executive Functioning)

4) Tests/Projects

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,

At the very least, students and parents are delighted by the simple fact that their daily battles over studying substantially decrease or disappear.

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 program 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.

Developing self-awareness begins our approach to self-motivation. Students need to identify their own drivers, values, and dreams. From there, students are taught how to link their key motivations to school success.

Students are also tested to learn their dominant learning style (auditory, visual or kinesthetic) and how to apply their strengths to studying.

With more self-knowledge, students buy into the improvement program. They don’t feel forced into something they don’t want to do. They want to be successful.

Unfortunately, most students do not have their own goals and path. Yes, they have been pre-programmed to “go to college and get a good job.” That’s typically what we hear students say when we ask them about their future plans. They don’t mean what they’re saying; they are merely repeating what they feel is the answer adults want to hear.

Through our proprietary processes, we help students create their own goals and intended path. When they feel their goals are their own, their motivation changes dramatically.

How to study more effectively. Learning to study more efficiently will lead to better grades. The cliché “study smarter, not harder” is actually sound advice. But how do you study smart?

We find that students generally learn best by: 1) “chunking” their study material into distinct segments, 2) studying in 20-minute focused bursts, 3) organizing homework with problem-solving work first and memory based work last. These and other practices enable faster studying with better results.

How to effectively manage time. Between activities, school, and work, student busy-ness has reached insane proportions. By helping students to better manage their time, we lead them not only to higher performance, but to greater health and happiness.

The first skill we focus on for most students is time management. For example, the well-known Covey Four-Quadrant method of understanding where to spend one’s time effectively is commonly taught in the business world but rarely conveyed to young adults. Most students spend very little time in the quadrant titled “important, not-urgent.”

At the Learning Consultants we help transform students’ use of time by actively incorporating outstanding business principles — such as the Covey Four Quadrants — into their lives.

How to perform optimally in class. Students do not fully understand how teachers evaluate them. Even the most objective grading system has room for subjective evaluation.

Understanding the system for evaluation and cultivating better relationships with teachers lead to better grades.

The common complaint of, “I have a bad teacher” is often simply a mismatch between student learning style and teacher instructional style.

Students can learn to adapt their learning style to best match the teacher’s approach. Students should also be mindful that academic transcripts do not reference bad teachers. But grades are grades, and it is the student’s responsibility to earn the best grades possible.

How to become a better test taker. “I’m not a good test-taker” is the excuse many students make for poor performance.

Students say they’re not got at tests the way they might describe their eye color or height, like it is an unalterable characteristic.

At the Learning Consultants, we believe that good test-taking techniques are teachable. With our help, self-described bad test-takers can become good test-takers.

Our students are taught distinctly different ways to prepare for the three common test formats: 1) memory-based, 2) problem-solving, and 3) essay-based. Students are also taught best practices for test-taking, such as process of elimination techniques for multiple choice exams, working towards answers in problem-solving tests, and incorporating critical “buzz words” in essay tests.

How to write for academic success. Learning how to write well has implications well beyond high school. While college professors and corporate managers are not usually common allies, but they are united in their disappointment in what they see as this generation’s poor writing ability.

Writing well is a cornerstone for academic success. The process for creating quality writing is a mystery to most students. The Learning Consultants program teaches students writing techniques that will immediately help in school and, more importantly, develop skills for college and beyond.

Individual Monitoring. The Learning Consultants designed its program with results in mind, custom-tailoring to each individual student’s needs, strengths and weaknesses.

Individual sessions are designed to work with the student’s current classes, mid-terms and, particularly, finals, to help students get better grades in the present and attain mastery for the future.

Through media-enhanced, interactive, engaging activities, we educate in a dynamic, entertaining manner.

Students are stunned that they actually enjoyed their work with us. More importantly, parents delight in how their students transform while they are working with our teachers.

The Learning Consultants grew out of our primary service area in Shoreline and Southeastern Connecticut.  The company’s success led to organic growth in other areas of Connecticut such as New Haven and Fairfield Counties.  In addition, the regional attention to The Learning Consultants led to the creation of our New York office.

As word-of-mouth is our best advertisement, please ask your Connecticut neighbors about The Learning Consultants tutoring, test prep and educational advisory services in Fairfield, Easton, Westport, Weston, Redding, Ridgefield, Wilton, New Canaan, Norwalk, and Darien.

The Learning Consultants is considered the premier tutoring and test prep company in Fairfield, New Haven, Middlesex, and New London counties in Connecticut.