The Future Teacher Tutors program at American University's School of Education provides high-impact tutoring to K-12 students across the District of Columbia Public Schools in partnership with CityTutor DC. Bachelor of Arts students majoring in Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, or Secondary Education take a course where the tutoring is embedded, giving them valuable early field experience prior to their senior year when they will become student teachers.

Our Tutors

Each week, students tutor elementary, middle-, and high-school students throughout the District of Columbia, working with educators to build off of lesson plans taught in the classroom. Tutors receive a stipend to make getting to an in-person tutoring site possible.

Program director Dr. Ocheze Joseph said, “This program is a great first step for our future teachers to get one-on-one experience tutoring students, and this type of tutoring is proven to improve academic outcomes for the K-12 students. This real-world teaching experience is invaluable for our undergraduates.”

High-Impact Tutoring

Tutoring is teaching, usually one-on-one, aligned with specific learning objectives. High-impact tutoring has been shown to lead to significant learning gains for students when supplementing their classroom experiences, according to Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator. High-impact tutoring goes hand-in-hand with a student’s curriculum and responds to the student’s individual needs.

DC’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education cites “A robust body of research demonstrates that HIT is the most effective learning acceleration tool, achieving academic growth through small-group, intensive tutoring tailored to individual student needs.”

High-impact tutoring has been shown to be 20 times more effective than standard tutoring models for math and 15 times more effective for reading. Studies demonstrate that the practice increases students’ learning by an additional three to 15 months across grade levels.

~The National Education Association (NEA)

SOE continues to expand the AU Future Teacher Tutors program to:

• Serve more DC public school students

• Continue training tutors to ensure DC school students meet grade-level expectations and improve academic outcomes

• Give more hands-on tutoring experience to future teachers

CityTutor DC continues to partner with organizations to expand opportunities for more DC students to receive high-impact tutoring–a research-backed practice that involves frequent, consistent small group or one-on-one sessions between a trained tutor and student to supplement classroom learning. For more information on CityTutor DC, visit CityTutorDC.org.