| TUTORIAL SYSTEM
The tutorial system is the school's strongest instrument for personal formation wherein the goals of wisdom and virtue are personalized. A tutor who is a member of the school staff is assigned to each student (tutee). A personal relationship, based on trust and confidence, is forged between the tutor and the tutee through periodic conversations. The tutor's task is to take a direct and personal interest in each child's development. The principal area of education, which the tutorial system addresses, is the student's character. Everything else, including academic results, flows from this.
The tutorial system is the main channel for home-school collaboration. Parents meet with their daughter's tutor several times a year to work together towards the child's total development and assure greater harmony between the home and the school.
The Guidance Center provides SPED, counseling, and comprehensive testing programs that may be needed to support the Tutorial System. For consultations, please contact the School Psychologist.
School Psychologist: Agnes Yasay
Frequently Asked Questions about the Tutorial System
1. What is the Tutorial System?
The Tutorial System is a means of personalized education by which the school, through the Tutor, collaborates closely with the parents for a holistic education of their children.
2. What is the role of a Tutor?
A tutor is a personal mentor, life coach, and mature friend to her tutee. She is not an academic tutor who gives remedial classes to her tutees. The principal role a tutor is to help the parents and the child craft a life of noble purpose, making sure there is unity of criteria and action between the family and the school.
3. Who is qualified to be a Tutor?
Any school staff who meets the following criteria is qualified to become a tutor:
a. She understands and is committed to the school’s philosophy on education;
b. She has a good grasp of the meaning and implications of a sound home-school partnership in the education of children;
c. She has good communication skills and knows how to listen and motivate her tutee;
d. She loves children and adolescents and understands their development stages;
e. She is strongly grounded on sound moral principles
f. She strives for excellence, practicing virtues at all moments, especially integrity, discretion, humility, patience, fairness and optimism.
g. She has an ongoing desire to improve her craft as a Tutor and to improve herself as a person.
4. What is the difference or similarity between the task of a teacher or class adviser and that of a tutor in the school’s thrust on personalized education?
The teachers, class advisers, and tutors all help the student to develop self-awareness, value the world around her, make good use of her freedom, and strive to reach a satisfactory output in school and the other objectives of human and spiritual formation for her total self-development. However, while a teacher or a class adviser is in charge of a group of students, a tutor deals with a tutee on a more personal level based on mutual trust and confidence.
5. What are the objectives of the Tutorial System?
a. To help families in the holistic education of their children. Ultimately, it is about collaborating with each family in the formation of their children in personal autonomy and freedom, so that they would be in condition to formulate and pursue meaningful life goals. Thus, it is necessary for the parents to be disposed to put into practice in their family life some basic criteria which are also given in school, such as respect, self-discipline, service, etc. Otherwise, the lack of alignment between these two natural spheres of education will negatively affect the child. Hence, the first concern of the tutor is to make sure that there exists an open communication between her and the parents, as well as between the parents and the child.
b. To guide each student in charting a life course and to provide direction for her self-development, based on the principles of excellence and moral character. Thus each student will be helped to foster personal responsibility, integrity, respect for self and others, be service-oriented and pursue their own personal and spiritual development.
6. How are tutorial chats carried out with parents?
The regular meetings between the parents and the tutor are a valuable assistance to parents in the exercise of their privilege and duty as primary educators of their children. The greater the cooperation, confidence and friendship existing between the parents and the tutor, the more effectively will the parents be assisted in carrying out their own responsibility of directing the integral development of the young person.
Ordinarily, the tutorial chats are structured to accomplish the following:
a. Exchange of impressions and information about the child at home (includes family life, relationships with different family members, duties at home, study habits, time management, etc.) and in school (includes tutor’s personal observations, feedback from teachers and class adviser, psychometric tests, report card, etc.).
b. Focus on key issues with the aim to ensure that the parent-tutor meeting comes to grips with character issues and growth in virtue. The child’s academic motivation is, to a large extent, a consequence of her character development.
c. Set goals that are realistic, specific and achievable.
d. Develop a follow-up strategy that may well involve discussing ways of helping the child take responsibility for personal goals, quick parent-tutor contact throughout the school year, mother and daughter time together, etc.
e. Restate and record goals and strategies to keep them high in the list of priorities, and to be able to review them in the next meeting.
7. What is the role of the other members of the school community in the Tutorial System?
a. The teachers and class advisers provide the tutor with relevant information on the academic and behavioral performance of their students. They are also expected to promote positive discipline among the students.
b. The other members of the school staff can also give feedback about the students that can help in their character formation.
c. The teachers, class advisers and the rest of the school staff are always expected to give good example to the students and help them strive for excellence and good character.
8. What is the link between the Guidance Center and the Tutorial System?
The Guidance Center serves as an arm of the school’s tutorial system. It provides services that cater to the educational, personal-social adjustments, as well as the career needs of the students. The tutor makes use of the information from the Guidance Center in her tutorial task.
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