Varsha Desai loves kids. She also loves education. Her job allows her to concentrate on both. While serving as an adjunct professor at Tulsa Community College, she found theaverage student to be completely unprepared to study college-level mathematics. "I realized the problem was in the basics. College students, even bright otherwise successful ones, did not have a handle on the basics they should have learned in grade school."

The realization astounded her and see began to look for a solution. Then she found Kumon Math and Reading Centers. It was started some 50 years ago in Japan by Toru Kumon, a teacher and parent who wanted to help his son do better in school. The unique instructional method he created proved to be so successful his son was able to do calculus by the time he was in the sixth grade.

Sharing his success with others, the Kumon method began to spread. Since then, it has become a business and teaching phenomenon. There are now more than 1,400 Kumon Centers in North America alone. With centers in 43 countries, Kumon has helped more students succeed worldwide than any other afterschool program.

Kumon is an approved provider of supplemental services in Oklahoma.

It has been a part of the Tulsa community for several years and Varsha's South Central Kumon Center, located on the S.E. corner of 61st and Memorial in the Manchester Square Plaza, is one of the most successful. It has been named by the Kumon Corporation as one of their "Elite Gold Level" centers, a national honor given only to a handful of their franchisees.

Varsha and her husband are from Bombay, India and they both became citizens soon after coming to America in 1995. But Varsha says he knew she really was an American during a recent conference in Jamaica given by the company for the owners of their Elite Kumon Centers. "I got homesick and I could not wait to get back home...to Tulsa. I realized then, not only how blessed I was to be an American citizen, but also to get to live in Tulsa. I was born in Bombay, but Tulsa really is my home now," she explained.

Kumon helps everyone. It is not a tutoring method just for kids who are having trouble. It helps all students continue to grow.

To say Varsha believes in Kumon is a complete understatement. After 5 years of teaching the method to hundreds of kids including her own two children, she believes every student should continue Kumon from pre-Kindergarten through high school. "Kumon helps every-one. It is not a tutoring method just for kids who are having trouble. It helps all students continue to grow," she said.

Students begin at a comfortable starting point - determined by a placement testówith work that can be easilycompleted. Children are able to master the basics and gain complete proficiency with each successive step. They develop better concentration and study habits because the Kumon method helps keep kids from getting frustrated.

The heart of the Kumon learning system is a curriculum of more than twenty clearly defined skill levels and hundreds of short assignments spanning material from preschool all the way up to college. With each assignment, the child advances in small, manageable increments.

Students can start the Kumon program as early as Pre-School (ages three and up), and continue all the way up to college.

To learn more about the program or to schedule a center visit, call (918) 254-5437 or visit, www.KumonSCtulsa.com.