After a long hiatus over the summer, the Cistercian Tutoring Club has returned in triumph. We were unable to provide our services last spring due to the pandemic coupled with our new online reality. Though COVID-19 has its limitations, your dependable Cistercian Upper School has taken advantage of online meetings, and we’re ready to help!

Without in-person activities available, the Tutoring Club will be hosting virtual meetings Monday through Thursday from 4:30 – 5:30. We want to give both tutors and students time to settle home from school before jumping into sessions. These online meetings will be hosted via our Microsoft Team, so please contact your Form Master if you’re interested. You can also email us at [email protected] or [email protected].

When in-person activities return, the Tutoring Club will hold sessions from 3:30 to 4:30 in the Form I and II classrooms. We will ensure minimal cross-Form contamination and careful sanitization of the classrooms before and after meetings. For those of you who aren’t familiar with our club, there are no obligations to come in consistently. We provide help any time, whether it’s only for one test or across multiple subjects. Given that our tutors are also Cistercian students, not only do we provide help in a certain subject area, we also provide study and organizational tips that are essential to succeeding under Cistercian’s rigorous curriculum. We also encourage students to ask their teachers questions as there are times where even our tutors can get confused.

Being a tutor for the club is more restrictive than being a student; you are expected to show up with some kind of regularity. Whether you volunteer twice per week or every day, we need to know when tutors show up so that we can assign them to students whose questions match the tutor’s strengths. If tutors aren’t faithful to their commitment, we’re often left with one tired tutor managing 5 different kids, and that means no one is able to learn the way they should.

We hope Tutoring Club provides an environment where students can learn while also having fun. They are being tutored by those they consider “big brothers,” people who were in their shoes just a few years ago. There have been moments where the students have distracted their tutors with intelligent discourse on who would win in an imaginary fight, but that merely contributes to the charm of the club. It’s not a place of intense and silent learning, rather it’s a place for students to grow along with their tutors. In fact, we’ve had Fridays where we introduced the children to new science experiments or did a mock Model UN with impostor aliens. On other days, as a treat, we’ve brought in Kool Aid and M&Ms (for those that do their work, that is).

These things that I’ve mentioned have been present for the past 2 years of our flourishing operations. This year, the Tutoring Club has teamed up with Dr. Dudasko and Fr. Gregory to present the Writing Center, a hub where any Cistercian student (not just Middle Schoolers) can submit their writings and essays to be reviewed by their peers and teachers. The Writing Center is a great opportunity for students to improve their writing skills, which are valuable in any field. Any Upper Schooler interested in working at our Writing Center can email Dr. Dudasko, Fr. Gregory, or the Tutoring Team.