Armando, the oldest of four siblings, has always helped students that were struggling. At an early age, it was his younger brother and sisters. He helped them with homework, math or with whatever subject they needed help. As a teenager, in addition to helping with schoolwork, he taught both of his sisters how to drive – in cars that had manual transmissions! (They still laugh about the jerking and lurching of the car until they were finally able to get it down to a smooth ride.) In high school and college, Armando initially started off on the path toward medical school, but ended up putting it aside to help his family. He began working and eventually decided to make a career in private business, helping companies grow, expand and succeed. He helped two young businesses grow from less than 20 employees and mostly doing local work to over 150 employees and operating nationwide. While working full time, he regularly helped the children of co-workers when he saw they needed help or were not doing well in school. He was good at helping students learn and always found it to be very fulfilling.
Vicky is a business major and has over 20 years of experience working at a private school, in both Personnel and Admissions. While there, in addition to handling many administrative functions, she went the extra mile to help parents find solutions for their children. Some families quickly and easily enrolled in the school, while others faced various challenges. Rather than simply resigning herself to only enrolling the easily qualified families, she got creative and found ways to help all families overcome any obstacles they faced so they could ultimately reach the academic goals they had established for their children. This sometimes included recommending specialized programs, services or resources – such as tutoring. Vicky was resourceful and very successful at what she did. Parents loved the genuine care she always exhibited throughout all of their dealings with her.
Success Tutoring has been serving the Burbank community since 2001, tutoring K-12 students (public, private and homeschoolers) as well as college students and adults. For over 20 years now, they have been increasing student proficiency in phonics, reading, basic and higher level math and science, SAT Prep, AP classes and more. With two dozen skilled tutors consisting predominantly of current or retired teachers, Success Tutoring is well known as the place to go for academic assistance. Owner, Armando Salcido said, “Every student is different. We meet with the parents and students first and then match the students with the right tutor to ensure we can get successful results.”
Success Tutoring offers 1-to-1 tutoring in most academic subjects as well as group SAT Prep workshops. During the summer months they also offer very successful math and language arts review workshops for grades 3rd through 6th. These specialized workshops help students retain what they learned the previous year, allowing them to start the following school year successfully.
In 2018, due to its effectiveness and success with students of all ages, word had spread and Success Tutoring found its small offices filled to capacity. On top of that, they had accumulated a fairly lengthy waiting list. Armando had to start thinking about expansion. He didn’t want to just open another office though or find a bigger building. Armando began considering how he was going to reach more kids in the most efficient, effective way possible. That’s when Armando began doing research to find a good, reliable platform for online tutoring. Several platforms were tried and reviewed until one was found that met all of his requirements. He chose one which had been specifically designed for one-to-one online tutoring. The main feature was an interactive whiteboard where both student and tutor (each from their own home) could work together as though they were in the same room. They could both interact on a whiteboard, upload worksheets and homework problems, do demonstrations and overall have the same experience as students in the tutoring center had. The tutor and student could work out math problems together and see what the other was writing – in real-time. A video and audio communication system was integrated right into the program so that not only could they work on the whiteboard together, but they could also see and hear each other – again, just as though they were in the same room.
The advantage of this new operating system was that students could work with a tutor from home, but could still get one-to-one help. The student could ask questions, let the tutor know what it was that s/he did not know or which sections, areas or problems needed further clarification. The tutor could also see if the student was understanding or appeared to be puzzled. It was perfect! Prior to 2020, online tutoring was still the smaller portion of Success Tutoring’s business. That all changed when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. As they already had a tested, workable and reliable platform to use, they were able to quickly make the move from in-person, in-house tutoring to online tutoring delivery. This allowed all students and families to continue to get the help they needed, while still being able to deal with the limitations of the situation. There were a lot of challenges to making the move but with a workable platform already in place, the disruptions were much less than for other businesses that had not already set up a way to conduct business online.
Success Tutoring then rebranded itself as Success Tutoring Online and set up a new website specifically to promote its online services. By maintaining its strict adherence to only bringing on the best, most effective tutors, Success Tutoring Online has continued to grow. Now, in addition to the many local students in the Burbank area, Success Tutoring Online has expanded nationwide and currently has students throughout the United States. “As long as a student has a good strong internet connection and a reliable computer with good audio and video connections, our tutors can help.”
Ever the creative entrepreneur, Armando is now looking at expanding Success Tutoring Online’s services to provide more support to homeschooling families as well as exploring other avenues for helping students learn – all in addition to continuing their ever successful one-to-one online tutoring. The bottom line for Armando and Vicky is to always help students learn and help families achieve their academic goals.
_______________
