Wouldn’t you like to enroll your child at a tutoring centre that cares about their success? Well, Dongmei Yang and her tutors, at the Eagles Landing Academy, treat every student as if they are their own children. This Academy director strives to provide the very best tutoring to help her students reach their highest potential.

Interview was conducted verbally, so transcript reflects natural, conversational English with conscious light editing versus what might appear in a formal, written piece.

Dongmei: My name is Dongmei. Our centre is located in the Eagles Landing Plaza, in Vaughan, on the northeast corner of Major Mackenzie and Dufferin, near the Yummy Market and Dollarama. Very convenient and very easy to access.

Dongmei: Actually, I set up the Academy tutoring centre in Vaughan in 2011 for a few reasons. The first one is, I love education, and the children, and I’ve had so many years of experience in this field. The second one is I have a solid understanding of Math and I’m very strong in professional writing too. So, I think my background and skillset made me particularly well suited to operating a tutoring centre. Another reason is the competition for getting into the universities, especially a good university or a good program, is very intense. My tutoring centre was able to help my own son get into an excellent program. I want to help all students reach their full potential and get into their university of choice.

Dongmei: We specialize in Math, English and all Sciences. The Sciences include the General Sciences as well as Physics, Chemistry and Biology. We cover all age ranges from SK up to Grade 12.

Dongmei: Actually, we looked for a few locations before we finally made the decision of choosing this area. This area is a new and fast developing area, with lots of very well-educated couples who tend to have a strong focus on their children’s education. And there are quite a few schools ranging from elementary to middle to high schools.

Dongmei: I think most of the students from the high school level are from Stephen Lewis Secondary School and Maple High School and Emily Carr Secondary School. So, those are our high school students. And, for the elementary school and middle school students, they are mostly from Dr. Roberta Bondar Public School and the Herbert H. Carnegie Public School and Pleasantview Public School, etc.

Dongmei: I think it really depends because we have a big range of students from SK up to Grade 12 and we have different types of students. So, we have the average students whose marks tend to be 70% and 75% on the report card. For those students, we’re going to help them improve to an A on their report cards. Besides those students, we also have students who are below average. For example, on the report card they might have a C or D or lower than 70. For example 60%, 50%. For those students, we have to do some catching up review work to get them back to the average, as the initial step, and, of course, then above the average. Besides those students, we do have some A students or those getting high 80s, and for those students, we try our best to explore their greatest potential and bring them to the next level by challenging them, since they are basically ahead of their classroom work. So, for those kinds of students we try to help them attain a high or top ranking in their grade or perhaps help them win a certain achievement award they are striving for or we help them get into an elite university or special program.

Dongmei: Actually we are super strong in Math and Science and also we have English. For Science, we have Chemistry, Physics, and Biology. Math we cover up to Grade 12 and English up to Grade 12 too.

Dongmei: Actually, I’m very proud of my students. There are many wonderful stories of student successes that I like to share with others. But the most enjoyable aspect of operating my centre is when students bring their excellent achievements – tests, awards or report cards – to show me, and they are so happy and smile so proudly. They are like my own children. Those are my happiest moments.

Dongmei: I think that there are three differences. The first, and most important one, is “truly caring” because a tutoring centre is actually a service, and is providing a service to all the families and to all the students in the community. And I really care about my students, and consider them my own children when they come to my centre, and my happiest hours are spent helping them progress. When you care you won’t pay much attention to the cost and profit. My only focus is to help the students. So, while most of the others that provide similar services offer a higher tutor-student ratio. But, in our centre, most of the time we offer one tutor up to two students only. And when the student is struggling with a certain topic we always do one-on-one tutoring in order to bring the student back in line with expectations.

The second one is looking after various levels, and different growth levels, of students. I have a very solid understanding of Mathematics and strong skills in professional writing. For every student, I will usually look after them together with a tutor at least in the first session until we have a better understanding of the student’s learning ability. And then I will discuss with the tutor after the first session how fast we can go with this particular student, and how far we can go with the student. We then create a personalized course outline, based on our assessment.

The third one is our highly qualified tutors. Most of our current tutors are certified teachers – not like in some other centres offering similar programs, where they might hire, for example, university students as tutors. But, at our centre, most of them are certified teachers in schools. Although a few tutors are not certified teachers, they have been teaching formally for more than 10 years and their majors were either English/Language, Mathematics or Science. So, their credentials are strong. I’m very, very proud of my tutors who are very, very reliable, knowledgeable, patient and friendly.

Dongmei: Actually, I’m very proud of all my students. We have many wonderful student success stories to share, but because of the time limit, I can only name one or two. For example, I have a student named Glen. He started his tutoring in the second semester of Grade 9. That is maybe three, three and a half years ago. He’s still here today. At that time, his mark was only around 70%. So, after one year and a half of tutoring, he entered the Waterloo Math Contest and won the championship at his school. And I’m very, very proud of him. Now he’s in Grade 12, and he applied to the computer science programs at Waterloo University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto, and he got an offer from U of T already. So, hopefully within the next few weeks, he will get an offer from Waterloo University.

Another success story I would like to share is about a student named Alex. He started his tutoring when he was in Grade 4. At that time he was in an IEP program, and because of some degree of learning disability, it was very, very hard to tutor him within the first three or four months of his program because he easily forgot whatever he was taught. So he was very, very hard to teach; it was a great challenge, but we really wanted to help him succeed. Most of the time we gave him individual tutoring in order to try to bring him back to parity with his regular class. So after about one year, his mom called me excitedly and told me, “Dongmei, Alex has been allowed to return to his regular class – he is no longer in the IEP program.” This is a very, very great achievement.

Dongmei: Yes, exactly. Even a student with a learning disability we can handle and we can definitely improve to have lots of potential.

Dongmei: I think the most important thing I want to relay to parents is when students come to this Academy, we treat them as if they are our own children, and we invest great effort and care into helping each student realize his/her highest potential.