Peer2Peer Tutors: “Students learn best from other students”
This article appeared in the Washington Post and was written by By Daniel de Vise:
“Private tutoring is big business in the Washington suburbs. And now it is a full-time job for Kimel, who graduated this spring and can devote his full attention to Peer2Peer Tutors, the company he founded five years ago as a senior at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac. Peer2Peer pairs mostly struggling students with older teens culled from the cream of Montgomery high schools.
In the past academic year, Peer2Peer employed 130 tutors and served 176 students, at rates of $35 to $45 an hour. Kimel says gross revenues were in the low six figures.”
and here is how the idea was born:
“Kimel says the idea came to him in Ms. Williams’s first-period Advanced Placement calculus class at Churchill. The class roster read like that of a mathematical all-star team, but other kids at Churchill were struggling — especially in math, but also in science, foreign languages and, sometimes, such basic organizational skills as the timely completion of homework.
He placed a $50 ad in a local weekly paper: “Students learn best from other students. Any subject. Any grade. Call Erik.”
Three students replied, and Peer2Peer was born.
“Students learn best from other students,” Kimel said. “You want a peer. You want someone close to your own age.”