Fit Learning Center offers a science-based, effective academic intervention for kindergarten through high school students who need a personalized approach, according to owners Cristin and Mike Johnston. Fit Learning provides one-to-one coaching and teaching in 40-hour enrollment blocks for reading, math, logic and comprehension, penmanship, and advanced written expression. Tutoring sessions run for 50 minutes and are held four to five times per week depending on the student.

"An expert conducts a comprehensive skills assessment to identify your learner's fluency in a range of core skills we've identified as drivers of academic success," according to the company. "Then we develop a curriculum and approach, so every learner builds the true mastery of skills for life-long learning. It doesn't matter if your learner is gifted and talented, struggling, average, or learning disabled; our approach is scientifically proven to meet your child's needs."

The couple discovered the benefits of Fit Learning after their third-grade child had been diagnosed with ADHD. "Our child's relationship with learning had been broken," says Cristin Johnston. "He was despondent. He had a skillset full of holes in many of his foundational reading, mathematics, and writing skills and had an extremely negative view of himself and his abilities."

Cristin and Mike, who each hold a Ph.D. and are Board Certified Behavior Analysts at the Doctoral level, decided to enroll their son in Fit Learning. Many of his skills were dramatically improved after 40 hours of tutoring, they say. "Most importantly, his relationship with learning had been repaired," notes Cristin. "It was clear that Fit Learning vastly improved his educational trajectory and saved our family from the stress we were all feeling as a result of his struggles with school."

In October 2021, the Fit Learning Center opened at Hacienda. "Using the science of learning harnessed by Fit Learning's individualized approach, which includes making academic work engaging, enriching, and fun for students, was something I knew I had to do," says Cristin, who has worked as a professional behavior analyst in education in the Tri-Valley for 10 years.

Both Mike and Cristin say they believe that children who have struggled with learning not only fall behind academically but also suffer from damage to their self-confidence. "At Fit Learning, we don't just provide highly individualized and effective academic interventions and supports whose effects can be clearly seen in standardized, norm-based measures of achievement. We also target many of the learner behaviors necessary for success in learning," says Mike. "Great improvements in a learner's endurance, effort, focus, and attention are also very common after using our approach," adds Cristin.

Gifted students as well as struggling students can benefit from Fit Learning's personalized tutoring, according to the couple. All of the company's programs "use a multi-modal approach that greatly improves visual and auditory processing speed, working memory, executive functioning, confidence, and perseverance."

Reading, writing, math, and logic are among the available programs. One program is specifically tailored to parents who homeschool. Another program, called Lil' Fits, offers young children from pre-K to 1st grade training in Listening, Understanding, Following Instructions, Language Building, Reading Readiness, and Relational Math Concepts.

For more information about Fit Learning Center, please visit fitlearners.com/centers/pleasanton or call (925) 395-2643.