FEATURED TUTOR: JULIA
Julia in Costa Rica with Tilly the Two-Toed Sloth
We sat down with Julia, one of our amazing math and science tutors, for an interview to learn more about her experiences tutoring, working with LTLS, and raising a baby sloth.
How did you get into teaching/tutoring?
I actually started in college, through work study. I was a receptionist and did various other jobs, but one of the things I very quickly figured out I could do was tutor other people. Sometimes I would tutor them while being a receptionist and get paid twice! I’ve also always kind of done a little bit of teaching. I’ve done a lot of craft teaching, like sewing and embroidery. When I moved to Seattle in 1996 my brother was a middle school math teacher and he suggested I be a tutor, so I promoted myself independently — basically the same way Andrea started — and I did that for almost 10 years. Eventually I discovered LTLS through some teachers at UPrep. I really felt like the people at Liddane and I shared a philosophy of tutoring. Tutors are the people who are not your parents, your teachers, or your coaches; they’re nobody who has any authority over you, but they’re totally in your corner. It’s super important to me to start out my relationship treating the students as though they are already adults: a relationship of equals and mutual respect. The students are as much the drivers of this as I am. My job is not to impose a structure on them, it's to help them find a structure that works for them.
What’s your favorite thing about working at Liddane Tutoring?
How do I pick just one? It’s so easy to just say all the people, but the truth is that it’s all the people. There is not any one person at Liddane that I don’t like. And Andrea is a phenomenal boss. Because of her, she’s built this amazing team. She’s really brilliant at managing the business and keeping all the moving parts clear. LTLS is serving the kids, the parents, the tutors, and the schools. All those entities have different needs, and Andrea is really good at actively serving all those different communities. The reason she’s done that so well is because this is a calling for her, it’s not just a job. It’s important to her that all the people are taken care of in order to serve the students. Her fundamental priority is to serve the kids, but she knows all those other pieces need to be treated just as well to do that effectively.
What have you learned through your work in education that you feel is most important to share?
Tests are not tigers. Our brains were designed to keep us safe from things that could kill us. As a consequence, in the modern day our brains respond to stress that we’re under as if the thing that we’re scared of could kill us. That’s how we evolved: the brain is trying to keep us safe. It's really important to be able to say to the brain, “I’ve got this. It's just a test, it's not a tiger — just sit down in the backseat and take a nap,” because if you’re in that stress space the only three options you have are fight, flight, and freeze. None of those options are learn. You can’t learn when you’re in a stressed out or scared space. You have to be in a place of calm, relaxed, joyful curiosity in order to learn. Liddane does a phenomenal job of making a place for students to feel relaxed and safe so they can learn.
What’s something we don’t know about you?
I raised a two-toed sloth. I grew up and lived in Costa Rica, and this was during that time. Her name was Tilly, and she loved hibiscus flowers, so on my way to work I would stop by this house that had a huge hibiscus bush, and I would pick a bunch of hibiscus flowers and I would feed them to her all day. She’d hold them from the base and eat them like an ice cream cone.
When I had her I was working at a gift shop, and baby sloths hang off of their mothers all the time. So I had her with me in a little sling while I was at work and she would hang off of me. And at home she would sleep in the bed with me. I had her with me for most of two years. Sloths do everything slowly, so it took her a long time to grow up and go back to the wild, but she did eventually leave me for good for a home in the trees.
FEATURED TUTOR: CELEENA
We sat down with Celeena, who is one of our amazing math and science tutors! Celeena is teaching a range of MentorMeet classes this summer, from Majoring in Psychology, to Fat Studies (an exploration of sizeism), to Macrame.
How did you get into teaching/tutoring?
I guess it was a serendipitous event. I wanted to go to grad school and do research, so I was at a coffee shop just applying to research positions. Through a friend of a friend, I met Nicolette (the Chicago Branch Director) at that same coffee shop, and we really hit it off. I thought to myself, “Why would I apply for research jobs when I could do something I know I like, which is working with people?” That’s how I got into tutoring. I have a passion for education, and I think that just makes tutoring really fun.
What is your favorite thing to work on with students?
I love helping students hate word problems less. I am very passionate about this because I personally love word problems. I would do them all day every day if I could, but most people I meet hate them, so I have taken it upon myself to help others hate them less. I do this by first explaining that a lot of it is psychological, and the way the questions are phrased is designed to stump you. The way to solve them is by taking them apart, because then they become a lot more manageable and less challenging. This is also a good life lesson for students: problems that seem huge and confusing are often a lot more manageable when you are able to break them down into parts and tackle them bit by bit.
What have you learned through your work in education that you feel is most important to share?
I think it's so important to instill a passion for information at a very young age. It doesn’t even have to be knowledge, just that love for continued learning. The students who I see struggling the hardest are the ones who don’t have that passion: the ones who are just forced to be there, and don't have an interest in being there. I can't force someone to have that passion, but when it’s there it makes learning so much easier and more enjoyable. I think it is harder to instill that passion as people get older. I always try to encourage students to find their passion and run with it.
What’s something we don’t know about you?
Maybe only Andrea and Monica know this about me, because I talked about this in my interview when I first got the job: I really enjoy taking care of plants. I’m starting to expand my collection lately. I used to be more focused on outdoor plants, but now I’ve gotten really into indoor plants. I don’t have a favorite plant, but I really like anything that's a string of something: String of Hearts, String of Pearls, etc. I want to have all of them, and I don’t have any!
FEATURED TUTOR: NICOLE
We sat down with Nicole, one of our amazing tutors, as well as our Test Prep Trainer, to talk about some of her experiences tutoring at LTLS, as well as what she likes to do in her spare time!
How did you get into teaching/tutoring?
I started my tutoring journey when I was very young, helping my peers in class. The earliest instance I can remember is a time in kindergarten where I was helping a boy to understand colors. I don’t remember any specifics, but I distinctly remember sitting with him when no one else did to help him with that. My mom was a teacher, and I went to school in her district, so if students were struggling, coworkers of my mom would ask me to help, and I began working with students younger than me. I knew I wanted to do something in education, but realized I didn’t want to be a teacher, so I focused on tutoring. I really like working one-on-one with students, and helping people find learning fun.
What’s a favorite story you have from working at LTLS?
One of my favorite things that has happened was with one of my students in the middle of the first quarter of this school year. He’s a 7th grader, and he managed to bring all of his grades up to A’s, but he didn’t know that yet. He was sharing his screen so we could look at his grades, and when he noticed they were all A’s, he was so excited! He said, out loud, “I feel so proud of myself right now!” It makes me feel great when people can say things like that at a young age, because that kind of positive self talk is really important. I always hope it carries through to older years.
What have you learned through your work in education that you feel is most important to share?
I think we all know (or at least we are all told) that people have different learning speeds and different learning styles, and this really gets highlighted when you get to work with people one-on-one. It’s great to get to experiment with different styles as you are trying to find the one that works for your student. It’s really rewarding to find the puzzle piece that helps things click for another person. The fact that everyone has different learning needs is something that gets repeated a lot, and can sometimes just come off as a talking point, but it's not just a talking point. Everyone has a right to learn, and to learn in a way that's not just inside the confines of what has always been done.
What’s something we don’t know about you?
I really like mining! Not in a cave with a mining cart, but the term is sort of a blanket one referring to finding minerals. My dad is really into geology, and he has some mining claims in California, and when I still lived there I would go out with him a lot. One of those claims is a really good place to find beryls - a gem that comes in all different shades, with famous ones like emerald and aquamarine - and really pretty minerals. I not only collect minerals I find with him, but also others that I find or buy. I’m just really interested in geology and I especially enjoy finding things myself. There’s something really rewarding about using crowbars to move boulders, or digging intentionally and carefully to find really small minerals.