Two Brisbane Girls Achieve The Impossible In One Term

It is without a doubt that the most rewarding part about tutoring here at A Team Tuition is witnessing the seamless transformation of students unfold right in front of our eyes. With the recent launch of Project limitless Brisbane, we sat down with our winners Sarive Zena and Esther Abiya, whom, over the course of semester one, have truly embodied what it means to be limitless. Their resilience in overcoming adversity and taking control of their education is the epitome of the type of young adult that A Team Tuition strives to foster.

In 2017, Project Limitless, a program designed to completely transform a struggling student into a master of their own academic strategy, was launched on the Gold Coast. In line with A Team Tuition’s values of Analysing, Inspiring, Teaching and Mentoring, the program, worth $5000 guided our winners Skylah and Waide from failing students, to achieving A’s and B’s in all their subjects,

Following this success, in 2018 A Team Tuition launched Project Limitless Brisbane, with an added upgrade –a $10,000 package! . This project aimed to validate our results with Skylah and Waide and to provide support for our theory that success is merely the combination of having a growth mindset, a solid support network, and the right academic strategy. During the application process, after hearing the story of sisters Esther Abiya and Sarive Zena, we could not find a pair more deserving of the scholarship prize and thus, one scholarship became two.

Excited to embark on a journey to achieve illustrious ‘A’ grades, Esther and Sarive began their journey with us in April, alongside two of our best and brightest Academic Personal Trainers Lexie MacHunter and Katie Jansen. Prior to commencing the project, Esther and Sarive lacked the strategy to flourish academically. Although motivated, the girls were treading water, only just managing to stay afloat. With every ‘average’ grade, their fixed mindset that they would never succeed academically was justified. The girls knew that they needed to be pointed in the right direction – this was the underlying motivator for them to hit submit on their applications at the start of the year. A Team Tuition believed in Esther and Sarive’s insurmountable level of motivation, and within just one term of tutoring, the girls triumphed, heads above water, progressing from a mere pass grade, to A’s and B’s! It appears that the valuable mentorship from tutors Lexie and Katie, combined with the drive and open-mindedness of Esther and Sarive was a perfect recipe for success.

Esther and Lexie

To kick-start her academic make-over, Esther was paired with one of our most experienced and confident Academic Personal Trainers, Lexie MacHunter. Having completed an engineering degree, and currently studying law, Lexie’s evident comfortability with change and desire to learn were attributes that we believed would perfectly match Esther.

From day one, both Lexie and Esther showed an unyielding desire to make the most of what the scholarship had to offer. In a recent interview, Lexie praised Esther’s mature outlook when it came to goal setting.

“Esther’s attitude was always in the right place. From the outset, she knew what an opportunity this was and has gone out of her way to work towards the goals that we set together.”

From Lexie’s perspective, taking Esther back to the basics, to develop her maths and science skills, was the most important determinant of her progress. This technique surely paid off, with Esther receiving an A+ in Science on her first assignment since starting tutoring. Progress didn’t stop here – the successes continued to stream in. In the following weeks, Esther received an A in Information Computer Technology, an A in Religion (and was very proud to receive an A+ in the Knowledge and Understanding criteria) and an A- in History! Overjoyed with her results, Esther had nothing but praise for the help given to her by Lexie.

“Lexie is absolutely amazing! She makes tutoring really enjoyable and exciting. She constantly challenges me to push myself to be the best version of myself.”

Lexie believes that her success with Esther is the result of the way she approaches tutoring. Rather than adopting an authoritative stance like a teacher, Lexie claims that she wanted to portray herself as a mentor and a friend. And She wanted to ensure that the A Team Tuition collective also contributed to Esther’s development.

“It’s called A Team for a reason; students and Academic Personal Trainers both benefit from our valuable support network.”

According to Esther, having an adult, aside from her parents and teachers, whom she could build rapport and trust with, was a key factor contributing to her success.

“I don’t only look up to her as a tutor, but also as a mentor and a friend,” smiled Esther.

Esther’s semester one grades reflected her commitment to the project. Keeping in mind that Esther’s results from Term one (without Lexie’s help) contributed to her overall grades for the semester, receiving B+’s and an A- in such a short period of time has left everyone here at A Team wondering what she could possibly achieve throughout the rest of the year!

Esther herself is proud of her results and is astounded by the fact that her attitude and approach towards school has switched so dramatically.

“My perspective on school has changed so much for the better. I am constantly learning on how to become a better student and be a wiser person.”

Lexie is finding Esther’s attitude is rubbing off on her as well remarking that, “Esther’s drive and determination is contagious; it’s hard not to be the same!”

Sarive and Katie

Sarive and Katie’s relationship mirrored that of Esther and Lexie’s, but with Sarive being a Year 12 student, her future plans were the underlying motivators for her school transformation goals. With awareness that Sarive’s primary focus was improving her overall educational portfolio in preparation for her post-school career, Katie identified that the best approach for tutoring Sarive was to identify the common denominators across all of her subjects that were generally holding her back.

Katie commented that within one session she was able to identify Sarive’s academic strengths and weaknesses.

“Her English skills were a bit behind and this made it difficult for her to believe she could lift her grades. When first reading over her work, I realised that she was making mistakes in her spelling, grammar and punctuation which could easily be avoided by editing and reading over her work.”

Katie also recognised that Sarive struggled to articulate and comprehensively explain her ideas, limiting the quality of her assessment pieces. Katie made a point of noting that it wasn’t that Sarive didn’t understand what she was learning, rather, she struggled to reiterate information and explain it in her own words. Sarive expressed that Katie helped her address this issue.

“Katie did a fantastic job. She was a good listener. She understood me and picked up clues of what I was trying to say and helped me how to say them.”

These English-based difficulties are common for our students here at A Team. Often students struggle with being concise, clarifying their point and using proper punctuation. Katie did an exceptional job of addressing these fundamental skills whilst Sarive was in the middle of a hectic assessment period. After a few speedy sessions on punctuation how-to’s, Katie claims that she came to notice Sarive picking up on the little tips and tricks that she was suggesting.

“There are so many things that I learnt from Katie. She taught me to watch out for spelling errors while writing, to read each sentence aloud, to always follow a structure, to always read the ‘A’ criteria column, to re-read my work before any draft, to not let other people distract you while presenting and so much more!” reflects Sarive.

In just one term, Sarive jumped from C’s to B’s and only just fell short of receiving an A in English! Considering it can often take years to instil effective writing skills in students, Katie was immensely proud.

“This was a huge transformation for her as it made her believe she could not only achieve a B, but has the potential to become an A level student! Sarive became extremely self-motivated and dedicated herself to completing all her schoolwork every week. Her conscientious attitude allowed her to hand in her work on time, increasing her confidence with each completed assignment.”

Katie, like Lexie, wanted to be someone who could add diversity to Sarive’s support network. In this regard, Katie claims her focus was on encouragement and building trust, instead of merely giving Sarive instructions.

“I was someone who was there to support her, not only in sessions but throughout the week via email and text. I became someone she could rely upon and trust, and from there I was able to encourage and motivate her to do her best”

So, What’s next?

For the last session of term two, the girls sat down with their academic personal trainers to reflect on their progress over the course of ten weeks and formulate process goals for the following semester. Aiming high is clearly no overstretch for these girls, with Esther hoping to maintain her current grades and achieve a golden palm (straight A’s in all of her subjects) and Sarive hoping to achieve an A in any one of her subjects! The girls have even written out a step-by-step plan for the following term to keep themselves accountable – something we bet every parent of teenagers can only dream of!

With Katie’s graduation soon looming she has recently passed on the reigns to Makaela Fehlhaber a specialist English tutor whom is currently studying a Bachelor of Laws/Bachelor of International Relations. Sarive is excited to be starting with Makaela, whom she knows will be able to assist her with her goal of achieving straight A’s in Legal Studies next term for her Independent Research Project! Inspired by Katie, who studies a Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Sarive now wishes to enrol in a criminology degree. She will be working on her university applications during the upcoming term. Lexie will continue working with Esther, a year 9 student, who has already started planning for life after senior schooling. Esther dreams of studying a Bachelor of Laws and specialising in Human Rights Law – making Lexie an even more perfect match!

From our perspective, above and beyond school grades, perhaps the most admirable advances for Esther and Sarive thus far is their character development. Their fixed negative mindset’s – nowhere to be seen. The girls are now radiating confidence and positivity. Their energy emanates as soon as you walk into a room, and their smiles are a testament to the fact that hard work can be fun, especially when you reap the rewards!

Stayed tuned for periodic updates on the girls’ transformation into next term. Gold Coasters: keep your eyes peeled on our Facebook, Instagram, and website for the next Project Limitless instalment…you won’t want to miss this opportunity.

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How to Get an A in Physical Education (PE)

 

Speaking from experience, Physical Education (‘PE’) is one of the more challenging subjects at school. Cue everyone screaming “How?!” The answer is simple; PE doesn’t merely require academic awareness, but also peak physical performance.

 

PE is not a subject where you can lock yourself in your room and study for hours on end. Most schools allocate not 10, or 20% to the physical aspect of this subject, but 50%!  So, some simple advice to start of this blog: be prepared to become both physically and mentally fit to find yourself excelling in PE. Lucky for you, we’ve got a few tips to cover on how to master both elements in your next PE assessment! Exercise – it focuses your mind, makes you feel accomplished and is needed to perform sports at a high level.

Step 1: Exercise – it focuses your mind, makes you feel accomplished and is necessary to perform sports at a high level.

Doing physical exercise is probably the best place to start for many, many, many reasons. It circulates nutrient-rich blood around your body, gives you a sense of accomplishment and increases your lifespan, bone density and cardiovascular strength (all important things).  Exercising in every sense (running, weightlifting, swimming etc.) is going to make you feel more relaxed. Your brain secretes good neurotransmitters for an ‘exercise well-done’ which in turn, positively affects your brain’s functioning capacities and gets your body into tip-top shape to allow for the upcoming sports of the year.

 

"That’s easier said than done. When am I meant to do this? Sure, it makes sense to exercise but I don’t have time because I’m too busy studying after school, or I’m just too tired after school!"

 

Set your alarm for 5am, get out of bed, have a glass of water to kick-start your metabolism and start pacing around the house to wake up. Have your workout completed and be back at home by 7am to make your breakfast, (that way you can ease into the rest of the morning knowing that you are already making a head start to your day while most others are still fast asleep!).  As a fun side note - exercising in the morning helps you contain your emotions and so little pesky things that may annoy you throughout the day, won’t be as much of a worry. That extra serotonin release works wonders.

STEP 2: EAT NUTRITIOUS MEALS.

“Food is fuel, you get picky about what you put in the tank, your engine is gonna die” - Ratatouille.

The main point of this step is to make sure that you eat!  Skipping a meal because you’re too lazy to make it isn’t doing yourself any favours.  But more importantly, make sure you eat good foods. Unsure if a certain meal is good for you? Google its nutritional value.

Now why exactly are we eating wholesome foods?  Eating wholesome foods provides nutrients for your body to grow with all that exercise you’ve hopefully been doing in Step 1.  But academically, it’s providing fuel for your brain which enables it to think at a higher level and for longer periods of time thereby, increasing the efficiency of your study time.  Eating healthily is not only about building your physique to master the sports you’re going to be playing all year, but also about increasing your baseline academic alertness every day.

Step 3: Practice the sports you must learn – how else will you become good at them?

“Aww man we have to do swing dance? Why can’t we do regular sports like basketball or touch football…”

 

In every subject that you do, there’s going to be one particular course that you’re dreading – PE is no different. Not wanting to do swing dance? That’s probably the case for everyone, so take it in your stride. Get ahead of the pack and pick your swing dance partner in advance (find someone you know is trying to achieve that same ‘A’ as you).

 

Now it’s time to turn to YouTube and stream that sport until you are swing dancing in your sleep.  Start your day with 20 minutes of YouTube tutorials on swing dance techniques. No one else will know…

 

Is your sport not swing dancing? Is it something like surfing?  Rent a board, borrow a board, purchase a board - it doesn’t matter. Grab yourself aboard and to the beach you go. Practice on the sand before you hit the waves.  Whatever the sport, volleyball, soccer, touch football just get yourself out there and practice at least twice a week if you can.

 

If you don’t practice, then that’s you flushing half of your mark right down the toilet.  You can study as hard as you want but it will mean nothing if you can’t perform well when partaking in the sport.  Now that you’re physically fit and healthy, you have to remember the relevant academic skills to get you that ‘A’.

 

Step 4: Talk to your teacher and be specific.

In my experience, Physical Education assignments are very finicky, and that’s usually because your teacher has an idea that they clearly want you to express.  When I was in high school, I remember a really smart student receiving a B on an assignment because it wasn’t quite what the teacher wanted. You’re going to want to roll with the punches, and how do we do that? By talking to the one from whom the punches fly, the teacher!

 

I spent many Wednesday afternoons hanging back in the PE staff rooms with my task sheet, laptop, assignment, and questions all primed and ready to go for my teacher.  You have to be specific at this stage, you can’t just be like “so uhhh, what do you think?” A teacher will be less inclined to assist when they think you want them to check everything without having done anything yourself. It’s best to convey precisely what you’re struggling with.

For example:

 

“So in paragraph 2 I’m trying to convey that aerobic exercise has a causal effect on the increased elasticity in veins and arteries, do you think my evidence and phrasing of this idea is fluent enough?”

 

This question does a few things. Firstly, it shows the teacher you actually care about your assessment. This in turn, may change and pre-conception they may already have of you. Secondly, it narrows the teacher’s thinking to address that specific concern, which means they are more likely to give you good, direct and positive feedback.

 

If you just hand them 500 words and you say, “So…waddaya think?”  Their interest diminishes because you’re giving them too many examples to comment on which may accidentally put them in a position where they just want to hurry up and get you out of there as quickly as possible.

 

Make sure you’re doing all of this before everyone else.  About three days before the assessment is due, everyone is doing this to one degree or another and it just fatigues the teachers’ helping powers.

 

Step 5: Make sure all your references are authoritative journal articles or books – PE has some heavy science aspects, so you want strong sources!

Ask yourself - Where are you getting your references from for your assignments?  If you say google.com, I’m afraid you don’t have the right answer…and you’re missing out.  The theoretical side of Physical Education focuses heavily on: health, biomechanics and social science. To be able to proficiently discuss these topics,  you need to make sure that your references are 100% scientific!

 

“Well, where do I find sources then?”

 

Don’t worry I’ve got your back. You’ll destroy the competition when you wield the mighty sword that is: Google Scholar.  Open up your browser to just regular, inferior Google and type in ‘Google Scholar.’ Google Scholar is a database purely for scholarly literature. It contains frequently cited articles from experts of all fields.

 

Find key scholarly articles by typing in key words relevant to your assignment in the search bar, (words like “Anaerobic exercise” “Cognitive development” etc) read the abstract of the articles, determine if it’s relevant and then add it to a blank document to track your research (otherwise termed your document of treasures).

 

Academic references are worth their weight in gold, you will use them in university, so get used to using them now. Your teacher will be impressed and it boasts all kinds of points in your knowledge and understanding.  Just make sure when citing those articles (by clicking the citation commas underneath each link) that you make sure they are always relevant to your assignment!

 

Step 6: Use PE specific language – Knowledge and Understanding!

Do you feel like sometimes you’re writing an English assessment instead of a Physical Education one?  Occasionally, I would neglect using course specific words because A) there were so many of them, and B) I would forget what they mean.  Teachers love when students use course specific words because it demonstrates an application of the knowledge that they have been taught (when you use them appropriately, obviously).  So, whilst sitting in class, try to nab and create a list of course specific words.

 

Now for you visual learners out there, this one is for you.  When you hear a word in class that you would never use outside of the classroom, that’s when your spidey-sense should tingle.  Write the word in the back of your book, and either write a REALLY simplified definition, or draw a small thumbnail picture that represents the word so you know if you should use it in an upcoming assignment.

 

For example, consider the word ‘Anaerobic.’ Draw a picture of a stick man running really fast!  What about ‘Adenosine Tri-phosphate’? Try drawing a lightning bolt, or an explosion.  Accumulate 30 of these, then when the time comes for you to write your assessment, you’ve already established a mental connection to that word by trying to summarise it with a picture,.  If you have 30 applicable and well-placed course words in your assignment, you are going to sky rocket ahead of everyone else and the teacher will know that you’ve listened!

 

Step 7: Writing an assignment is just like exercising – Treat it like a workout!

When lifting weights, you usually go hard for a set and then take a break, and then go hard again and repeat that process until the muscle is worn out.  When you’re writing your assignment treat each draft like a set.  If you only do one set at the gym, you’re either A) Not doing much work, or B) putting way too much stress on your body all at one time.  If you think about it from the perspective that each attempt at an assignment draft is a session, you have to do at least three drafts (sets) before you can even think about getting that A (or building that muscle).

 

Like setting out your training routine, create a skeleton with all your ideas laid out in a flowing order and then refine, refine and refine again. Make sure everything is EXACTLY as you want it to be articulated, nothing less – just like an exercise program.  You’re aiming for fluent writing that anyone could read and understand.  Being concise and articulate is where you get those sweet communication marks.  To help you do this, make sure you write a sentence or two that describes EXACTLY what you want your assignment to convey.  For example, at the start of your assignment you may write, “This report aims to reveal specific academic barriers with school students in relation to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” Having something like this at the top of your document keeps your writing focused, and each draft on task.

 

Once you’ve made your three sets (drafts), you can then hand in your full draft to the teacher for them to provide written feedback.  Having a teacher there to help is like having a spotter while you’re doing a squat: they want you to succeed so they help give you important feedback to correct your overall form (assignment) and can help strengthen your assignment to that ‘A’ standard, or at least, push you over the line to get an A.  Exercising can be fatiguing, but writing assessments also causes mental fatigue. Treat your assignment like an exercise regime and it could work wonders on your work ethic!

 

Now it’s time to act!  Get your mind and body ready, put in that hard work and soar to all kinds of height. That ‘A’ is calling your name and you are fully capable of getting it, so what are you waiting for?  Go and grab it, and watch your mental and physically capacities increase as a result!

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