Why Did I Started a Tutoring Business?
To explain why I am starting to tutor it is important to understand what brought me into education in the first place. For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a teacher, I absolutely adored all of my teachers throughout my K-12 experience (there were 1 or 2 exceptions). I also had a supportive and involved family that made sure I understood what I was learning and understood the importance and value of my education. I had the parents who rallied other parents to take on the school board over curriculum decisions that were detrimental to our education. I love kids, probably obvious since I’m an elementary school teacher, but I really loved spending time with little kids and just watching and helping them explore their world. I regularly babysat throughout my teen years, and eventually went to college majoring in education. I worked a summer job from ages 19-26 at a local YMCA camp near where I grew up and enjoyed almost every minute of it, I worked the overnight camp program and there were some looong weeks with that.
Kids have this magic, enthusiasm, and general joy for life that many adults eventually lose. Seeing kids experience so many new things and learn through their summer camp experiences further drove me into education. There is something about the feeling you get when you see a lightbulb go off for a kid that is just indescribable. However, by the end of my college experiences, I was a little disillusioned by the state of the education system with the testing requirements, and jobs in Michigan were in short supply at the time, so I continued working for YMCA camps as part of their Outdoor Education programs for a few years after college. There I was able to teach still but not have to deal with the testing, behavior, and pressure that has become synonymous with teaching these days.
Obviously, I did end up in the classroom after a few years of “finding myself” and have spent the last 7 years of my life dedicated, to a fault sometimes, to the public education system, my students, and my coworkers. I love teaching, but most days I am too overwhelmed by the endless requirements from administration and lack of time to get everything done to enjoy much of what I do anymore. I got into this to make an impact on future generations and to foster a love of learning and school that I also enjoyed. As I have gotten older, I have become more aware of my need for a work-life balance and have found that increasingly hard to keep each year. The needs of the students are so vast and varied that it is impossible to adequately teach them all at the level they need to be taught at during a school day, or even school year.
My current district, and many others I know of, attempt to get teachers to tutor after school, but when you factor in what is taken out for taxes, health insurance, and retirement it amounts to very little money. Not to mention the time it would take to plan and prep for tutoring as well as the actual tutoring sessions. At the end of the day, most teachers find it not worth the money and value their mental health and work-life balance enough to pass on after-school tutoring. I have seen some of my students who need support be pushed to the back of the line because they “don’t fit” with any of the academic supports being offered to my grade level. They are able to independently read and do math at a 1st or 2nd grade level in my 4th grade classroom and the supports are going to my students that are working at a 3rd grade level in an effort to get them caught up.
This year has been my final straw, I’m a camel and my back is broken. I want desperately to fix the education system, but it is so broken the only way I know how is to leave it and try to help those within it from the outside. So, fast forward to today, I am going to start tutoring those students who are not able to get the support they need and deserve in their classrooms. Not because their teacher is bad, or they attend a bad school, but because the system is overwhelmed and this is the best way I can think of to help my fellow teachers, parents, and most of all the students.
