The help your kid needs in math might be right down the hallway.

Thinkist is a San Diego edtech startup that helps schools set up and manage peer tutoring programs designed to both close equity gaps and build a diverse teacher pipeline—two significant areas of concern for every district and state leader. It’s a system-wide approach to accessible academic support that enables both the tutor and tutee to think more deeply and ask better questions, cementing the learning and their confidence far beyond the hour-long session.

Thinkist is the next step in tutoring. Instead of finding strangers on the internet, Thinkist trains your students on how to help your students. “By modeling the best teaching methods, kids learn for life,” said Wells.

Two decades in the tutoring business taught Wells that there are five levels of tutoring with increasing levels of student engagement.

  • Explicit: tutor is doing almost all of the talking in a lecture based approach.
  • Demonstration: explaining the information with confirmation of understanding.
  • Conceptual: explain the information along with the why, and confirm understanding (tutor is still doing most of the talking).
  • Socratic: introduction to learning how to learn–tutor models an inquiry-based questioning to help the student to arrive at insight and connections.
  • MetaSocratic: the tutor is forming questions designed to help the student to form questions which break down the problem, gain insight, and form connections.

Read the full article about peer mentoring programs by Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart.