Year 12 Boy Goes From C’s to Straight A’s In Only 6 Months

A Team Tuition’s greatest pride and joy shows when a student finally finds the missing key needed to unlock their success. For our latest superstar, Jordan Abbott, that key was found through his partnership with his tutor Jade Bates - one of our most incredible and longest-standing tutors.

Jordan’s journey was quite different to what one would typically expect from a tutoring experience. A typical stigma around tutoring is that it’s only for students who don’t understand their classroom content – students who are often stereotyped as having lower intelligence.

At A Team Tuition, we know that this stereotype is nowhere close to true. It is not a student’s intelligence that determines their results, but rather their resilience, dedication to work, and the processes they use to understand their schoolwork.

This was exactly the case with Jordan. His knowledge and understanding of concepts was not a problem – according to Jade, his intelligence was quite high.

“In fact, the toughest thing about tutoring Jordan was that he was very intelligent,” claimed Jade, “and his subjects were quite advanced – often covering subjects I myself had not done before!”

However, Jordan struggled to adapt his knowledge into unfamiliar contexts, particularly questions that involved modelling and problem solving.

Therefore, the key to taking Jordan’s understanding to the next level was figuring out his preferred learning style – what we, at A Team, call a learning language.

A student’s learning language helps determined how they best take in information, and help translate it into a solid, all-round understanding. There are three types, all of which are analysed and explained in our learning language blog series.

Jade identified Jordan as an aural learner – someone who learns best through discussion and verbally fueled methods.

“Our sessions had a very conversational style, where I asked him a lot of questions to verbally draw out his understanding,” noted Jade.

Once Jordan had mastered his ability to verbally express his knowledge, the sessions shifted to focus on developing Jordan’s written responses.

“I would ask him to explain why if he wasn’t satisfied with his work, and helped him create checklist to help him reflect on the comprehensiveness of his work.”

Through doing this, Jade not only helped Jordan perfect doing his work through his preferred learning language, but also helped him develop in other learning languages such as visual learning. As we’ve noted before, this is when a student truly begins to dominate their studies.

Jade additionally focused on supporting Jordan in developing his organisational skills, goal setting, and personal evaluation – skills that are not only pivotal in school, but are necessary for any avenue of life!

The results from Jade’s mentorship and Jordan’s dedication were astounding. In just over six months, Jordan improved from a C in both Math B and Biology, to a respective B and A grade – finally achieving an A grade in almost all of his assignments – even for subjects he hadn’t been tutored in!

“Not only did his grades improve, but it was obvious that Jordan’s motivation and dedication to work enhanced, along with his confidence. He took more initiative with his assignments and study,” remarked Jade.

For his parents, the improvement in Jordan’s productivity and proactive attitude was the most impressive. Knowing that he was now personally taking steps to truly fulfill his potential relieved any stress they had about monitoring his progress and effort.

That was Jade’s biggest goal in their tutoring journey – to set Jordan up for the rest of his life.

“I hope that I have helped Jordan to develop skills that he can take with him throughout his life – not only to advance in university, but also to be able to communicate clearly and articulately to those in his professional life.”

Jade realised the important of these skills through her own experiences: she has come to the end of her university degree, and is now moving on from A Team Tuition to practice as an occupational therapist.

And, of course, Jordan has made a significant impact on Jade and her journey ahead.

“In tutoring Jordan, I was required to really step up, expand my knowledge and think creatively about how to be of most benefit to him,” said Jade.

“The ability to enhance my alertness and think creatively to overcome challenges will definitely be an asset when working as an Occupational Therapist!”

Together through their tutoring sessions, Jade and Jordan have made an incredible impact on one another. Such incredible change all started with a single moment:

“The transformation point for Jordan, I believe, was actually before he started tutoring, when he decided that he wanted to apply himself, get a tutor, and excel in school. This change in mindset, which led to my presence, inspired gradual growth in motivation, confidence, and grades,” said Jade.

Jade’s focus was not on teaching Jordan to help him ‘learn’ new content, but to guide him into a new understanding. The focus was on helping him harness how he best learns, so that he has the power to apply his process to any environment.

His dedication to improving his grades and attitude towards school was additionally obvious in Jordan's approach to tutoring. He never willingly missed a single session with Jade, and was constantly committed, out of his own volition, to doing the work needed to propel him towards succeed.

And that is the point where students begin to transform – when they make the decision to start their journey towards changing their way of thinking, learning, and living.

Sometimes a big part of our tutor’s work is to get a student and their family to this point; to help them see that they have limitless potential.

For Jordan, making this choice himself – combined with Jade’s guidance – has allowed him to strive towards his goal of gaining entrance into Biomedical Science at Griffith University. We here at A Team Tuition firmly believe in his ability and hope to see him achieve this dream.

We wish him all the best on his journey!