A Holistic Approach to Tutoring, at Rook Street
- Guest Author
- Jun 18
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 19
Reem and Noah, two of Rook Street Tutors’ co-founders, talk about their whole-person approach to tutoring, and what it is that young people might really need from a tutor.
Reem: What does being a tutor mean to you?
Noah: I have become very proud of being a tutor. It's a role which I have learned, and brings out my academic and relational capacities in ways that I care about.
Each time, I am meeting someone where they are, with what they have in terms of circumstance and capacity, and finding a way where they can learn and grow in the important ways they need. The process is really meaningful. So, tutoring has been a big and deep part of my life for the last 5, 6 years.
Reem: What is Rook Street?
Noah: Rook Street is a tutoring platform. That means it is a space fitted with four wonderful tutors who share a commitment to a kind of holistic learning. We practise our beliefs about how important learning can be in a young person's overall experience, and feelings of success and achievement in life. We collaborate and give each other perspective, and provide a platform that supports students.
On a technical level, Rook Street is a space that's set up to provide for the aspects of holistic tutoring. So, we have mentors and regular mentoring sessions. We have a worry box that provides a sort of always safe space, that makes a complementarity - a space to hold things that don't make, or quite fit into tutoring sessions. We try hard at providing for the different parts of holistic learning. We’re proud of how it feels concrete and thought-through from the inside and outside.
There is a balance there, in the kind of holistic we are interested in at Rook St which crops up in sessions and relationships. It’s between keying the session to the student in real time – and being considerate and aware, always, so that we are seeing the whole young person. Rook Street also has a central element that addresses the real and feelings parts of pressure, as comes studying for exams, and the exam clinics and writing clinics are set up for that.
Reem: Okay, so can you say more about what holistic stands for in this sort of space (Rook Street)?
Noah: Most basically, holistic is about a whole, and in this case a whole young person. Now, Rook Street is a tutoring platform, so we meet these young people in their lives as students - not to separate them as students from being human beings, but to see the priority of school-education in their lives.
And our holistic approach then comes from realising a method which is sincere about students’ emotional lives - their lives outside the classroom. The way it turns out, time and again, this is actually the most straightforward, way of progress. We want to see students come out of sessions with more of their own curiosity, more of their own smile- more of their own sense of themselves. And that is also what allows someone to sit down, with an exam in front of them, and think. So holistic just ends up being about really connecting students with their learning selves, allowing them to get to know themselves in the present and future tense, and succeeding.
Reem: What has made Rook Street feel necessary as a project?
I would only swap out necessary for true. Rook Street has felt true, in all the parts that are not just instrumental. That means engaging the curious parts of ourselves in the way that can be seen by students, which resonates with them. So, “curiosity,” which can sound abstract, becomes real and palpable. It has example, and sharing, and practise. And it turns out to be a key in young people’s academic lives. That’s a good … it’s wonderful, in that more than instrumental way.
So, truth comes out in the kind of platform we can offer to young people. The platform has the sense of a place where young people can grow from, another beginning point.
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