As we start our Targeted Tutoring program for another year I am becoming more aware of the fact that the original concept of tutoring is the central purpose of Kump Education Center.

The word “tutor” comes from a Latin root word that means guardian or protector. If we do our tutelary work well, we will make safe relationships with students enabling them to feel secure enough to learn.

Children can overcome their weaknesses if they learn coping devices to make them better students. With private tutoring students do not have to hide their weaknesses from the rest of the class. Good tutors can pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses of individual students and help them each become more effective learners.

“IQs are falling as basic needs go unmet” was the title of an editorial in the Charleston Gazette-Mail last Tuesday. For the first time in history, IQ scores have been going down in a number of research studies between 2000 and 2010. Abstract verbal reasoning and problem solving have declined, but spatial reasoning has not gone down.

The one thing that is decreasing across all the research is the students’ attention span. Some pundits blame social media, but in West Virginia our children in poverty may be hungry or worried about conflict at home.

Unless basic health and safety needs are met, we cannot expect to increase attention span, but we do the best we can to give one to one attention to students who do not get adult attention at home.

The starting point for our fourth- and fifth-grade students is to be sure that they have a healthy snack and a little social time to talk informally with their tutors. We always try to be sure that basic needs are met in order for the student to focus attention on one thing at a time.

Over the last few years, as we hear more and more about the harms of not having bus drivers, closing schools, and declining population in West Virginia, I notice that it is difficult for adults as well as children to focus attention.

With all the loud radio and TV talk shows, and the constant attention to cell phones, fewer adults take time to read newspapers or magazines. There is so little quiet time to think — much less talk with elementary school children about what they are thinking.

Tutors are needed to listen and help students to focus their attention in conversation.