Longtime tutor and educator Paulette Wingo hopes these parents will find some comfort and guidance in her first book, "Learning Doesn't Have to Be Complicated! A Parent's Survival Guide for the School Years."

"My goal is not to tell anybody how to do anything. My goal is to say to parents, 'These are some ideas. These are some things that can work for you and your children,' " Wingo said.

The West Side resident said the simple, straightforward strategies outlined in the book can assist parents in helping their children achieve better grades in school.

"It's all these different little pieces I tried to pull together that I know all parents are trying to manage," Wingo said. "It's simple things parents can get their arms around."

Her book was published in January.

She expects an intensified interest in her book this fall as families negotiate the school year, she said.

She began thinking about writing the book about five years ago.

After years of tutoring children from all socioeconomic backgrounds, she began to realize similar problems surfaced with students regardless of their family's financial status.

"It made me realize there was something going on that was strange," Wingo said. "Money didn't have anything to do with children not understanding school. There was something missing."

She started putting her own ideas together and then scoured a bookstore to find something that dealt with the topic.

But nothing she found was quite right. There were plenty of books for helping children with specific learning disorders, and plenty of books about helping students in particular subject areas.

"The problem is if there is a broken-down relationship between you and your child or you and the schools, specifically the teachers, I couldn't find anything that addresses these kinds of issues," she said. "I wanted to come up with something to address those kinds of issues."

Wingo decided to fill the gap.

"If you're just a regular old parent who is trying to figure out how to make this thing work, it's going to be difficult" finding helpful books, she said.

Wingo considers her book most useful for parents of elementary and middle school children. Ideally, she said, parents would begin working on their child's academic success before the child ever enters school.

Wingo has a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies and master's degree in education from the University of Texas at El Paso. She was recently named by the university and its alumni association as a 2009 Gold Nugget Award recipient for the College of Education.

She said she planned to write more books with the aim of helping parents help their children succeed.