Ask any college admission test tutor if they can make a difference and they will quickly say yes — some will “guarantee” that they can raise a student’s score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or other standardized tests by a certain number of points.##M:[more]##
Barbara Kalmus of West Windsor also believes she can make a difference. But the difference she offers is not all about raising scores a certain percentage on the SAT. And the difference is one she would like to see applied to the students of disadvantaged neighborhoods as well as to affluent communities such as Plainsboro and West Windsor.
“The benefits in studying for the SATs go way beyond just taking the test,” says Kalmus, who has been involved for more than 30 years in education as a teacher, guidance counselor, supervisor, and consultant. “We want the students to really learn, and really get it. We don’t want them to just memorize things for the test and then forget them.”
Kalmus is the director and founder of Princeton Education Network (PEN), a newly launched tutoring business offering SAT test preparation, college prep classes, and a teaching experience that Kalmus calls “rare” in the world of tutoring.
In the long term, Kalmus hopes, PEN will expand its services to inner city schools. “In a place like West Windsor we are providing a service to kids who are going to make it in any case. But what about the kids who don’t have that opportunity — if I keep my knowledge here then I am just widening that gap.”
Kalmus says that in schools where she has served as a consultant, in cities such as Newark, the typical college admission test preparation includes hiring a large firm to offer some classes. “There’s no record keeping, and then the firm leaves. Nothing stays in the district,” says Kalmus. Working with PEN’s summer intern, West Windsor resident and Princeton University sophomore Jeffrey Zhao, Kalmus is offering another approach: “We say let us teach your teachers, and impart to them what we know about preparing for the tests.”
“It’s easy to put the blame on the kids in tough urban districts,” says Kalmus, “but often times, it is the teachers who need help too.”
While some of the national test prep firms disparage the value of the standardized tests, Kalmus argues that they present challenges that are useful in the real world as well as in academe. “It’s learning how to learn,” Kalmus says of her tutoring approach. “I tell students to forget about school. Imagine they are in the real world at a job and someone throws a report on their desk and tells them to present a summary in an hour. That’s what the test is testing.”
Adds Zhao: “It’s not about ‘beating’ the test. It’s not about learning tricks.”
In fact, Kalmus discourages guessing on the SAT. She believes being confident and knowing your material will eliminate the need to guess, but if you still don’t know the answer just leave it blank.
“If you guess and you get it wrong you lose a point,” Kalmus explains. “If you leave a question blank you won’t get a point but you won’t lose one either.”
Kalmus arranges her classes in a structured classroom environment just as she would do if she were teaching in a school. She takes pride in the time PEN takes reaching out to the students who may need additional help. “It’s worth it,” she says, because according to Kalmus there is much more to the SATs than just getting into a good school.
“When you study for the SATs, you are preparing yourself to do on-the-spot thinking. That happens to us everyday in life, and we cannot always be prepared. When you study and take this test, you learn how to do fast problem-solving,” she says. “We don’t realize how often we need that quick thinking.”
Before Kalmus went out on her own in 2005, she had been a partner of the Princeton Institute for Quality Education (PIQE). Kalmus was in charge of the language arts part of the program, her partner in charge of math. She began expanding into schools, offering her services in SAT preparation and professional development.
“The idea that I had was two-sided,” says Kalmus, “One was the commercial aspect of it — to offer classes and private tutoring. But the other side, where my passion was, was to get into urban districts.”
Kalmus had given a presentation for the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association and was approached by the supervisor of the Hoboken English department. He had been struggling with underachieving athletes and thought Kalmus’s tutoring approach might be the answer.
She offered to make him a deal. “I’ll tutor your athletes, if you give me your teachers.” Her goal was to educate the teachers as well as the students. If she could train the teachers, they could begin to carry on her tutoring technique themselves. “I want to expand my methods, pass it on, and stay on as a consultant,” she explains. “You want to have someone in your own school be able to offer this to the students.”
At about this same time, in 2003, Kalmus decided it was time for her to go on her own. She and her son Perry, a graduate of Williams College, began working to create Princeton Education Network (PEN).
Kalmus now had to begin creating her own program for PEN. Her previous partnership had only offered an SAT program, with students having to partake in the entire program, even if they did not need the help in Math. It was an obstacle Kalmus had always disliked and could now overcome. Teaching each area of the SAT in its own element gave extra time and help to students that may be weak in one area and stronger in another.
She started advertising for reading comprehension and then another course for grammar and essay writing. People could sign up now for one or the other, they did not have to take both. “My classes filled up immediately,” says Kalmus. “My program was solid with no gimmicks; a teacher’s approach to learning.”
As PEN grew Kalmus began bringing on more staff and volunteers to assist in her tutoring. Michelle McNulty, a former High School South math teacher, began teaching Math classes.
Jeff Zhao, who had received tutoring from Kalmus when he attended the Lawrenceville School, is working with her to start a new college preparation class called College Prep Academy. Zhao says he is all too familiar with the struggle of getting into the college you want and doing it the right way.
“I had wanted to go to Princeton since my freshman year in high school,” says Zhao. “I was lucky, my mom knew what to do to help me get into college. But a lot of people don’t know, and this program (College Prep) would help them.”
College Prep will teach students and parents how to get into the college of their choice and how to deal with rejection — the major stressor in college application time. “The stress is out of control,” says Kalmus. She believes the way for parents and educators to help students deal with this stress is to teach them to be realistic.
“Students have to realize there is so much more out there than just Ivy League schools,” says Kalmus. “There are so many great schools out there just waiting for great students.”
The new program will also encourage students to do more research on other colleges and on their desired major and people in that field. “I tell kids to find people they really admire and then ask where they went to school.” The answers are often surprising.
Kalmus believes doing this opens new doors and opportunities that can lead a student to the right school for them and show them that there is much more out there than the same old 25 or 30 schools that she says most of the brightest WW-P students apply to. “We need to play down the prestige factor.”
She contrasts PEN’s College Prep program, which starts in ninth grade, with that of consultants who offer to “package” a student for the college application process. “We encourage students to develop their innate interests, to appreciate their uniqueness and build on it. But don’t join the chess club if you don’t like chess.”
Kalmus’s interest in personal tutoring has come from years of experience with difficult students and different challenges. With an undergraduate degree from Syracuse University and a masters in counseling psychology from Suffolk University, Kalmus assumed she would go on to get her doctorate. As she began to work more with kids and teaching however, she reconsidered.
In 1974 Kalmus ran a federally run program working with troubled teens in an academic work-study program in North Carolina. “That was where I started to develop my approaches,” Kalmus recalls. “I loved working with the kids, and I knew this was what I wanted to do.”
After moving back to her hometown in Passaic, New Jersey, to take care of her ill father, she moved to Israel and took a job as a high school guidance counselor in Tel Aviv. “I had wanted to go there my whole life,” she says. Kalmus was married in Israel in 1980 — two of her three children Perry, now 26 and Dari, 25, were born there. In 1984 returned to New Jersey where she and her family settled in West Windsor.
Kalmus’s youngest son Ori, 21, was born in the U.S. and is now a senior at Lafayette. Her eldest son, Perry, is now working in Hollywood for United Talent Agency. Her daughter Dari has followed in Kalmus’s education steps and won an Eden Award for her work with autism. She is finishing her masters at the University of Miami.
There are thousands of SAT tutoring businesses that promise the best score and the college of your dreams. For a test that was once deemed impossible to study for, SAT study options and tutors have now become a competitive market.
What does Barbara Kalmus and PEN promise? “We spend our time teaching,” says Kalmus. “We want our students to leave knowing the material and we want them to take this test in confidence. That’s the most important thing.”
Princeton Education Network (PEN), 866-443-4PEN, 609-275-9880. www.PrincetonEd.com.
Some of the upcoming classes:
Reading Comprehension, Saturdays 9-11:45 a.m. and Tuesdays 5:30-8 p.m. (no class on September 22). 18 hours, $570. September 8-October 2.
Art of Grammar & the Essay, Mondays 5:30-8 p.m. 10 hours, $330. September 10-October 1.
