The Murphy-Cates Learning Center Difference

Are you seeking professional educators who can assist your child in educational advancement through one-on-one tutoring? The Murphy-Cates Learning Center is one of that nation’s leading, private tutoring centers and has an established reputation as one of the most effective in the nation. We are different because we don’t take a commercialized, high-sell approach to our students but rather concentrate on the individual needs for learning. We work with students of all ages and abilities from gifted to developmentally delayed and those with learning disabilities.

The Murphy-Cates Learning Center does not just identify the areas in which your child need tutoring help--we diagnose why your student is struggling and find the underlying causes of your child’s academic problems through use of academic and diagnostic evaluations. These evaluations help identify core concepts that are missing or unlearned, and potential learning disabilities or cognitive problem areas. The results of these evaluations help us build a truly individualized regimen of study and assistance to address specific needs of the child. These diagnostics and custom approaches to each child set us apart from other franchised tutoring services.

As “The Tutoring Pros” we take a Three-Tiered Tutoring approach to each child’s needs. The Three-Tiered Tutoring methodology concentrates on repairing cognitive problems, renewing a child’s love of learning, and expanding learning abilities into previous undreamt-of areas. Learning difficulties so often sour a child on learning and knowledge acquisition. Tutoring will not help and will not have a lasting effect if the child comes away from the experience still hating to learn and explore new ideas. We help the child rediscover the love of learning and then support them as they naturally explore new areas and stretch their minds into higher cognitive development.

Here at the Murphy-Cates Learning Center, we work with students of all ages in one-on-one settings using proven methods of instruction. We use the Sail Away methodologies and materials for cognitive finite linguistic acquisition and teaching of language arts. Even students who struggle with reading discover a love of books and reading through the Sail Away program. We work with students in both on-going tutoring situations and in an as-needed tutoring basis for homework difficulties or standardized testing preparation. We help high school students prepare for the ACT or SAT so they can attain the highest scores possible, plus we work with adults who are preparing for college-level entrance exams such as the PSAT, LSAT, or GMAT.

A Murphy-Cates Learning Center Success Story

One of the first students at the Murphy-Cates Learning Center was an eighth-grade boy who was in special education classes in public school and causing trouble. He was obviously bright and the battery of diagnostic evaluations showed great potential in many areas. The evaluations also suggested a serious visual perception problem. The Center recommended a vision specialist who found that, under stress, the young man’s vision deteriorated from 20/20 to 20/50 in a matter of minutes. No wonder he was having trouble in classes with lots of reading, especially afternoon classes! Teachers noted that within weeks of coming to the Center the young man’s attitude in school changed from being the most difficult student in class to being the most attentive and helpful. The real challenge came when he was on the verge of failing for the year because of social studies grades that hovered around 50. The teacher and principal agreed that if the student could make at least a 65 on the remaining tests, they would allow him to pass. The Center worked with the student on specific study skills and he made a 70 on the first test. The teacher was very happy, but the second and third tests resulted in visits to the principal’s office, but not for the same reasons he had been there in the past. This time the teacher carried with him tests with grades of 88 and 93. He passed and went on to graduate from high school.

He is only one of many such students who not only recovered academically but rediscovered that learning can be fun and success feels great.