Diverse learners, meet your matchmaker

It’s all about finding the ideal combination. For Laura Reber, Founder and CEO of online tutoring service Progress Parade, success is a two-way street, and the greatest successes come when a student is paired with the perfect expert learning specialist for them. It’s a win for everyone.

“One of my greatest satisfactions is really making the right match,” says Laura. “When there’s a good match of tutor expertise and student needs, then the student makes a lot more progress, and the teachers – a lot of whom are overworked and underpaid – get work that’s rewarding and well-paid.”

And often, Laura notes, teachers get to see a lot more progress one-on-one than they might otherwise get to see in classes with too many students and not enough resources.

“Honestly, for me, it’s as much about providing great work for amazing teachers as it is about providing great help for students who need it. I really get fired up when I get a call and I know the perfect teacher, and I know it’s going to be a great, energizing experience for everybody involved.”

"What we specialize in are kids who need a specialist."

Laura, who is also the founder of Chicago Home Tutor, is a highly trained school psychologist who has been working in that field for more than a decade. It was that experience — seeing how well students respond to individual instruction that is 100% designed with their needs in mind — that propelled her to launch Chicago Home Tutor, and now Progress Parade. Both services are grounded in, and dependent upon, the same high-level educational expertise.

“Really, what we’re doing has gotten this new fancy name in the last couple years called ‘education therapy’ instead of tutoring or specialized tutoring,” explains Laura. “And what we specialize in are kids who need a specialist.”

These are students who may require somebody that understands their background and that can, for example, look at a report that’s been prepared by a neuropsychologist and implement the recommendations, or perhaps someone who has a deeper understanding of students who are in special education.

“So that’s where we come in: we bring that kind of expertise into someone’s home and really make the perfect fit,” says Laura.

Online learning’s unique opportunities

Laura realized early on that the need for specialized learning transcended traditional in-person tutoring which, while it certainly has its advantages, also has some fairly steep downsides that limit families’ access to the education they need. The solution was to take the teaching online.

“The reality is that we’d all like to be able to meet with somebody in person — that perfect somebody for us who has a complementary schedule,” says Laura. “But the other reality is that, working with kids, you really only have a two-to-three-hour window after school. And so, if you need a specialist, those times book up fast. 

“Also, finding someone who can get there and back in the desired time can be really, really challenging. In Chicago at rush hour, for example, that limits you to a one-or-two-mile radius for finding a tutor because it takes 30 minutes to go three miles. I think online tutoring cuts out a lot of those limiting factors by opening up the possibilities — a lot — in terms of scheduling and location.”

The possibilities available online also extend to the tutoring itself, with a whole host of advanced educational tools at the fingertips of both student and teacher, literally.

“One thing we do a lot of is reading teaching, and we do multisensory reading instruction using some of the most popular and effective programs that currently exist,” Laura says.

“There are also different manipulative letter tiles that you can use online. And as far as interactives are concerned, for example, you can use shared mouse control for a seamless experience in some of the games. You can also easily upload your worksheets into a shared whiteboard technology, so you can complete those together just as you would if the paper was sitting there in between the two of you, among many other things.”

Everyone loves a parade

Laura, it goes without saying, is very much looking forward to growing Progress Parade and her expansive team of expert learning specialists into a borderless, limitless offering that turns learning challenges into achievements no matter who, or where, the students are.

“With Chicago Home Tutor, it’s been a really rewarding experience for our tutors and a really awesome product for our students, and I just want to make that more accessible to as many people as possible,” she says. “It’s been really thrilling to see that, with Progress Parade, wow, the options have just opened right up and a lot of the constraints I’ve had in the past have just evaporated.

“I’m also just excited, as always, to be able to make the best possible match that there is.”

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Fun Facts: Laura graduated valedictorian from Truman State University, and has traveled extensively throughout Spain where she became fluent in Spanish. She also, go figure, fosters dogs that are sick or have behavioral needs.