Sylvan Learning Center, Edwardsville, undergoes changes

Sylvan Learning Center in Edwardsville has moved to 110 Rottingham Court, Suite A, and it has new local owners, Misty Menossi and Lenny Rakers.  Purchasing the franchise was a perfect fit for this sister-brother team who have both sent their children to Sylvan in the past.     Menossi and Rakers actually grew up in Greenville, but both of them gravitated to Edwardsville to attend SIUE.


 "I graduated from SIUE, and I've lived here for 20 years now.  I have four children in the community," Menossi explained.

"I came to Edwardsville in '05 to go to SIUE," Rakers noted.  "I lived there until 2012 when I got married to a girl in Mt. Olive and moved up there.  We still come to Edwardsville I'd say roughly four days a week."  "We also are pretty close to my sister and her family and her four kids so I'm usually at her house every other day there in Edwardsville," Rakers said with a chuckle.   "I also have a daughter that we're taking to Sylvan down in Edwardsville, and my sister has also sent her kids to Sylvan there.   The next thing we hear 'Oh this place is up for sale.'  Well, we're sending our kids there anyway so maybe let's look into it," Rakers said.

Menossi, who also runs other businesses in Edwardsville, added that she "wanted a business that was in the community that kind of gave back and helped the community."  "And this I felt was a perfect fit," she pointed out. 

When the siblings bought the franchise, they immediately looked to relocate the business within Edwardsville.  "Previously the Sylvan was at a little bit of an older facility.  So our goal was to move, give it a new fresh look with a more engaging environment," Menossi said.   "Our new facility is about double the square footage of what our previous facility was.  So that's going to allow us to really add a lot more programs "" courses, camps as well as have a lot more tables going for traditional tutoring." Most may know Sylvan as offering traditional tutoring which it does, but many may not know that Sylvan's tutoring is personalized specifically to the child.  "We do an assessment at the beginning and we identify specific weaknesses and then the curriculum is tailored  to that specific  child. 

So it's not a broad curriculum as far as the tutoring goes," Menossi said.  "The key with Sylvan is that all tutoring is done by certified teachers that are certified by the state of Illinois."   In addition to tutoring, Sylvan also offers a wide variety of other programs such as Math Edge, which is targeted more for the accelerated student that wants to excel even more, homework help and ACT as well as SAT prep.  "Then we offer an assortment of different courses and camps around STEM and engineering  - things like robotics and coding..." Menossi stressed. 

Sylvan offers camps in the summer that will be reformatted to likely six-week courses throughout the school year.  There's still time to sign up for several camps being offered in July. Math and Phonics Fun Camp for kindergarten through second grade is being offered from 9 a.m. to noon July 17 through July 20 and Read Ahead Camp, which is geared for pre-k to Kindergarten students, takes place also from 9 a.m. to noon but from July 31 through Aug. 3  July STEM camps for grades one through eight take place July 17 through July 20 and July 30 through Aug 3.  In Morning Robotics, from 9 a.m. to noon, campers will build and program robots using Legos.

They will create different creatures while learning STEM concepts.  Then in  Afternoon Game Design - campers will learn the basics of game design from noon to 4 p.m.  Students will have access to their games so they can continue to work on them at home.  

 Read for Speed, which is for students eighth grade and up and great for high school students preparing for college prep exams, takes place from 9 a.m. to noon July 10 through July 13.

Middle school and high school students can also sign up for Back to School Boot Camp that runs from July 31 to Aug 3.  In this camp students will learn to organize schoolwork and study ares, use strategies to address learning preferences, set goals for the upcoming year and manage time wisely.  The Back to School Boot Camp will be offered to middle school students 9 a.m. to noon and high school students from 2 p.m to 5 p.m.

In addition to adding more camps to their offerings, Menossi emphasized that they are looking to add a homework help program.  "Parents can use us as kind of an after-school program to where kids can come four days a week for an hour and we'll make sure we have certified teachers in there to help with the homework and make sure they are getting that done to try to take that off of mom and dad's plate when they get home," she said.

She also stressed that being located close to Edwardsville High School now that they'd be easily accessible for EHS students seeking ACT and SAT prep, and she stressed that Sylvan is not just for the young child struggling with reading. 

"Sylvan came out with new curriculum around algebra and geometry and such.   We have programs that encompass children all the way from pre-k through high school.  We have a lot of different programs that can align to more than just the child that could be struggling," Menossi noted.  "I think sometimes that's maybe the first impression that the community has that Sylvan probably is for just the child that's struggling.  We're going to be so much more with the coding, the robotics, the STEM, the engineering, the science program, the algebra, the geometry, study skills." 

Sylvan Learning Center of Edwardsville will be hosting a Grand Opening and Open House event from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sept. 23.  There will be information at the event about all the programs Sylvan offers as well as new courses being launched in the fall, hands-on activities for the kids and "lots of giveaways."  "It's going to be a fun time for families to come and not only see what we have to offer, but it's going to be a fun day," Angela Turner, Sylvan Learning Center's Marketing Director said.

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