Growing up, my summer memories are filled with lazy summer days, playing in the woods near the creek, mowing lawns, drinking grandma's sweet tea, family road trips, camping and bonfires.

Summer time is still my favorite time of the year!

But for many students, summer is filled with hours in front of the tv, with no real productivity. This lack of a mental challenge creates what educators call the "summer brain drain" or the "summer slide". 

The summer slide is the nickname for when students go through summer vacation without any academic or mental challenge the way they were challenged throughout the school year. This lack of mental challenge actually harms your child's educational skill set to where they will start the next school year further behind in their knowledge and writing abilities.

That is why I highly encourage students to stay mentally challenged every day throughout the summer!

Congratulations class of 2018! Graduation is finally here! After years of hard work, your child's achievements are finally celebrated! 

So Congratulations to you, mom and dad, for your love, help, and support that got your child to this great milestone in their lives. 

If you are struggling with what to get your new graduate, here is a list of unique graduation gifts that I personally love!

When I was in high school, I seriously struggled writing essays.

My strength was in math class. Numbers just made sense to me. There is only one right answer in a math equation, but there could be many different right answers in essay writing based on what you feel. Which was part of the reason why I struggled in English class.

My struggles started in 9th grade. The school I attended was not able to find an English 9 teacher, so I had different substitute teachers while they tried to find a good English teacher. They never found a teacher, and I went an ENTIRE YEAR without an English teacher. 

Needless to say, by the time I entered 10th grade, my writing skills were almost non existent. I seriously struggled with every English  class and every writing assignment in other classes. 

That is, until I entered my senior year of high school. 

For many teens, summer time means relaxing, traveling, and fun in the sun with friends. For others, summer means sitting around for 3 months with nothing but watching tv, playing video games, and staring at their phones all day.

If that sounds like your teen, then it is not too late to change that habit! 

It's important to have some summer activities for your teen so that they do not have any "summer brain drain". This just means that if your child does nothing academically or mentally challenging for the months out of school for summer break, then it is likely that they will begin to slowly lose the academic information they learned this past year. 

I think it is vital for teens to have 3 important activities this summer!

We, as moms, may have many jobs that we fill, but Motherhood will always be the greatest job we'll ever have. Yes, it will be the hardest, most trying job, but still the most rewarding. 

I am a tutor that loves working with teens. I love this job as my chosen career, not because the pay is great, but because I love helping teens and students learn, and inspire them to create a life long passion for learning.

But even though I pursue this job because I love it, I still feel that motherhood is the greatest job I'll ever have. It is another reason why I love tutoring so much! Because this website, and creating these resources for you has allowed me to stay at home with my babies while they are still so young. 

Finals week can be very difficult and terrifiying for many students that are struggling in school. They know they have to perform well on these important tests, but worry and stress about grades if they perform poorly. 

Finals week can be a very tough and intense week for any student. First, the test is a huge part of the overall grade, which brings extra test anxiety to students. Next, students may have 2 or 3 major tests each day! How is a student supposed to study for three tests in one night!!

I was only in middle school when I first learned the benefit of challenging my teacher. 

I was in seventh grade pre-Algebra. My math teacher, Mrs. K, had just handed back our quizzes to the class. I had gotten only 1 wrong, but 4 out of 5 is an 80%, and I was not happy that I had gotten a C.

Math was supposed to be my strong suite. I was pretty good at it, and numbers just made sense to me. So if this was supposed to be the class I was good at, I would not settle for any grade besides an A for the class. And getting a C on a quiz was not going to work for me. 

I waited till after class to talk to my math teacher. She sat down with me to work this problem out together. The only problem was, she was wrong.

She showed me how to solve this problem, and I showed her how to CORRECTLY solve the problem. We went back and forth in disagreement for a long while. (We could not agree which step in PEMDAS was the correct starting point). 

We argued for SO LONG that she finally got so frustrated she shouted "Rachael, what do you want?!"

Every parent must face the difficult decision of whether to send their kids to public or private school, or to attempt to home school. I am finding this decision to be more difficult than I thought.

But as my own little ones are beginning to enter preschool age, I am now left questioning which education is best for my family. Even though I am homeschooling my daughters preschool right now, there is a huge difference between singing the ABC's and homeschooling my child 3 to 5 hours a day. (I'm not sure I'm cut out for it, but I would home school if I thought it was the best decision for my family). 

Plus my daughter is an extreme extrovert, and flourishes in group settings. Which is funny to me because I am an almost-extreme introvert. So I am trying to weigh all the options of which is best for her. 

As a tutor, I have only had experience with tutoring teens in public schools, and have most of my experience in the education system from private and public schools, which is why I write heavily about public school help and support.