As with most policies and procedures, many businesses wish this wasn't something we had to do. As we experience things and as I continue to learn from my mistakes and accept new families I knew this was something I would have to do.

Side note: I've recently been added back to the supply teaching list and I could be booked daily with the amount of jobs open and available, but tutoring your child is my first priority.

Life happens and I respect that, we are always course-correcting and trying to survive day to day things, not to mention the stress that many are under. As a parent, I know that you appreciate that the time I take to prepare and summarize for your child, is more than just the time I take with them during the session. As a way to continue to be able to provide services, I have come up with just a few things that I've never written down before, but felt it may be helpful now as we continue to work together. Thank you for understanding, I am sure you will agree that what I am asking for is respectable. This is for everyone's best interest.

Student interaction and readiness:

• if your child is "off" or unwell or distracted, this makes for a difficult session for them
• (I remember when I took a job at M&M Meats decades ago, they told me that if at any time we had "life" going on and we wouldn't be focused on work, that it was best to call in to take the day off because interaction and willingness to be present was most important for business and learning.)
  • I will ask this of you also. If your child is more tired than usual because of something going on for them or they are just not ready to engage and participate that day, I would rather you give them the time to regroup (meditate, do some exercise etc.) and cancel our session together.
• I do my best to try to bring the child back into focus and sometimes they are not interested in doing the work, and I may come across to them as questioning if they are focused or serious that day, I may even ask if they are needing a change (get up and move) or a short break to regroup, and in extreme cases, if we still have time in our session I will ask if they are done for the day, (I don't force anyone to learn with me, I don't want this to be a forced thing ever) and if they say yes, and we cut the session short based on your son/daughter's response - no session fee will be reimbursed. (in the very few times when this has happened I have had parents admit to me that stressful things were going on or they were more tired than normal) - these are times when tutoring isn't as important as their well being is.  You know your child better than anyone, so I trust that if you know your child is off that day, that you let them have the break. This is a time for you/them to regroup and do something relaxing or fun with them. Tutoring can wait. Like M&M's says, take the day to regroup. Session fee will be applied to a future session if you cancel in advance and let me know - even if it is within the hour of our session start time. I honour and reward open communication.
• In some cases if this happens a lot, it may be that the way I tutor them isn't what they need or isn't what is best for them. When children are responding in ways that seem aloof or disengaged on a regular basis, I will let you know in the summary and you may want to take a look for someone that is a better fit for them to work with. I never want your child to feel like they don't want to have sessions with me,  if this happens, I may not be the right fit for your child and that is okay. I am humble and know that I am not for everyone.  I am approachable so please don't hesitate to let me know if you are upset or unsure about anything.

Student practice at home:

• **ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT if you have only 1 session a week or only 30 minute sessions per day
• Ideally in Orton-Gillingham, it is recommended that tutors are working with students 5 times a week for 1 hour each session. The repetition and review is built into the sessions every day as time permits. For sessions under 60 minutes, or only 1 time a week for an hour, it is harder to cover all the review and practice needed, therefore practice at home is a prerequisite for best long lasting results and general ease in all sessions for each student.
  • repetition is key, therefore when I plan and prepare to help your child, I do so knowing that I can't do this alone, parents or older siblings can be part of the team. The more the child can take 10 minutes a day at home (for blending drills and red words), the more our sessions will be on track and the more ground we can cover during our sessions.
• if your child is being tutored with the Orton-Gillingham model for reading/spelling, please have your child practice the blending drills daily as well as the red word practice daily (I will not add red words or continue them if I can see they are not practicing, because some sessions are either too short or not often enough to take the time to work on red words. If your child is practicing this daily, we will continue to make red words part of our drills.  On the practice page, I have 2 decks that you are able to use to work on red words at your own pace if you'd rather do this completely at home. (the goal is for students to be able to spell a red word at least 7 times correctly before retiring that word and adding a new one). Ideally working on 3-5 at a time is enough. Please let me know if you'd like more information on the recommendations of steps if a child isn't spelling the red words correctly.
  • Eg. if red words are not practiced daily and we only have time in our sessions to cover them once in a week, chances are the red words will never get enough practice for us to add new words. If we can't add new words we will stop this part of the program. -see above for options to do this on your own if you wish.
  • Blending drills are easy and can be done either online or with your child's sound cards (labeled on the back and the practice page has details of how this is done). If your child works virtually with me, contact me to get an online deck for me to share with you to use at home, I will prepare this after each lesson if you are using it (it will change after each lesson as we add new "cards". Otherwise if your child works with me in person, they have their own deck based on the phonemes they've already mastered. The reason blending drills are so important is because we work pretty fast through the "sounds" or phonemes and as we build each week, old sounds are not reviewed as often. The more practice a child has at home the less likely they will need a detailed refresher during our session. If refreshers are needed, I do this no problem, it will just slow down the process we are going through each day and we will not cover as much of the current lesson as planned.
• optional extra practice: I create extra practice through games (also found for each phoneme that your child has learned with me on the practice page), this is optional but also will help them practice and have fun, they can go back to any sounds or blends that we have worked on and you will gain access to the new ones after each session also. I have also invested in a few extra programs to allow me to create more practice for your child through online books and worksheets. If you wish to use these (free of charge, please let me know so I can keep updating them for your child).

Lates or cancellations:

• I completely understand that life happens. If anyone understands that, it's me after losing my mom and mother in law within 3 months of one another in 2021. I am pretty good to make it simple to reschedule or accommodate late starting sessions. These are the things I kindly ask from you:
  • If you know you will be late for a session, please text me at 705-718-8385 to let me know. If I don't have a session or another appointment right after your child, I will extend my time to accommodate the late start time
  • If you don't let me know you are late, I will only be able to keep your session open for 15 minutes, at that time I will call it a missed session and no refund will be provided and I will not transfer payment to a future session.
  • If you have to cancel and you know you will have to, please contact me within 24 hours or you can also go to the email confirmation for your session and you can go ahead and cancel/reschedule it easily - the fee of your session will just be applied to the rescheduled or next session already booked If you prepay for a month, the credit will be provided towards the next month.
  • The only time I will charge for a cancellation is if you didn't let me know and you don't show up at all (in which case I will email you to make sure everything is okay within the first 15 minutes).
  • Keep in mind that even though I don't charge for most cancellations, I do hope that you can let me know with some notice in case I am able to take on a supply teaching job (even late afternoon sessions that are cancelled, I may be able to teach for half a day at a local school with enough notice). Again, best way to reach me is via text: 705-718-8385

Payments:

• if you know you cannot pay a bill (either pre-paid for the month, or a session if you pay per session), no problem, communication goes a very long way. I don't mind this at all when you communicate it with me.
• 25 days of non-payment and no response to reminders, I will have to put a restriction on any personalized or practice pages, next time you try to login (if you do) it will show you an "attention required" notification page. Late payment fee will also be applied (5% of amount due) - exempt from fee and membership pause, if you have communicated this with me
• 45 days of non-payment and no response to reminders, I will delete any pages I've created for your child or you. (it takes me a long time to create these personalized pages and keep them up to date, so this is something I don't want to have to do). (10% late fee) -exempt from fee and deletion, if you have communicated this with me
  • if you wish to continue tutoring services now or in the future after a deletion of pages, there will be new customer fee of $50 for admin to re-create the pages for you and your child and your grandfathered rate/current price will not be honoured if our prices have increased since you started with MCK Academy. Members who started in 2021 are grandfathered and there has been a price increase in Jan 2022. New members since 2022 are already paying the new price structure.  -exempt from admin fee and price increase if you have communicated this with me

Breaks in sessions:

• If something has come up and your child needs to stop sessions for a while, but you want to keep them on my list as current members/students, again I completely understand. If you wish to keep your current price and membership pages active, just let me know and we can discuss options about when you wish to start again. If a member pauses for over 3 months we will have to start as a new student with a new set of assessments to see where they are starting from.
  • This also applies to all members that I had to pause because of my need to focus on helping my own children after school with their academics they are struggling with. (any member that hasn't had tutoring since I canceled my after school sessions, will be the first I contact when I am able to add more evening sessions again - daytime sessions are still available to those who are wanting to start up again before I can offer after school spots)

***as you can see, I value communication very much. As I said before, I completely understand that life happens in many ways and when you communicate with me about challenges, cancellations, lates or payments, I respect and appreciate that very much. (ps. your details about challenges are not my business at all, but communicating with me that you need more time to pay or you had to cancel last minute all helps me prepare and plan ahead).

Thank you again for understanding that I didn't even want to write these Policies down. As I continue to accept new daytime students, this is something I knew that I needed to do. Most of you know me personally, but new people may not, so I felt the need to make sure I was able to refer people to a document like this.

Once again, I am grateful to be even a small part of your child's journey! Thanks for your trust.

Tara Cooper
705-718-8385