I am pursuing a masters in Education and a teaching credential in order to teach in public schools, an interest that evolved out of my current career as a private tutor and instructor. While I already have a BA in English and an MIS, my education has never been related to livelihood. Until this point, education's influence on my employment has been indirect and ironic: my careers have all evolved from the jobs I've taken to pay for my education.

I began working as a temporary secretary to pay my way through college. When I graduated in 1984, my work experience during Silicon Valley’s first heyday gave me far more opportunities than those available to an English major. I had already begun to develop programming skills, and soon parlayed a specialized knowledge into a junior programming job at Charles Schwab which ultimately led to a career as an independent consultant. After a decade of consulting, I decided to return to school for an advanced degree. As a single parent of a 14-year-old who would be attending college himself in four years, I needed to pay for my education out of pocket. I could not rationalize loans for an education that was primarily a luxury. (I could just see my son wearing a "Mom went to grad school, and all I got was this tshirt" t-shirt). My class schedule wouldn't allow for a return to full-time consulting, and part-time technical positions with flexible hours were difficult to find during the recession.

At the time, my son was struggling with geometry. I'd had my own problems with geometry back in ninth grade, but without any money for a private tutor, I figured the math out and tutored him myself. Within a month his grades pulled up; his future included a 34 on the ACT math section, a 690 on the Math 2c subject test, and a passing score on the AP Calculus AB test. (He's now in his second quarter of vector calculus at UCSC.)

My positive experience with tutoring led me to look into test prep as a source of part-time income. As a result, I became a Kaplan instructor, which was my springboard into teaching.
In addition to my busy Kaplan schedule, parents immediately began contacting me for private homework tutoring. Once again, the work that paid for my education became a career. Long before I graduated, I was working full-time as an instructor and private tutor. In 2006, I began teaching at a second institution, Elite Education , because I wanted additional classroom opportunities. My private tutoring provides the bulk of my income; I work with Kaplan and Elite to feed my love of classroom instruction.

My business is entirely generated by word of mouth, yet I often have to turn down new clients and classes. If I can use the market as a judge, then it has deemed me a successful educator in an wide range of subjects and demographics. At Kaplan, I teach courses for every college and grad school admissions test except the MCAT. At Elite, I teach composition and reading comprehension courses as well as a US History subject test prep course of my own design.

As a private tutor, I work with students from 9 to 18, tutoring every subject except biology and chemistry. My private students are all from white, upper middle class families. Elite's clientele is first or second generation Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. While many scoff that test prep companies cater to the wealthy, Kaplan is the brand of choice for the middle class. Moreover, Kaplan provides special rates for organizations working with low income students. Thus Kaplan offers by far the most diverse population of all my student suppliers, which is a key reason I remain with them despite many other higher-paying opportunities.

Last year, through Kaplan, I taught an ACT course to 21 students at College Track, a tutoring
organization. While I have taught low income, underrepresented minorities before, I had never before tracked the results, which can be seen here (student consent obtained, names have been changed) The students began with diagnostic scores well below the Hispanic and African American national mean. After the course, their ACT results saw a dramatic improvement of 21 to 50%; English was just a point below the national mean for all students, and math was just a half point below the national mean. The reading and science scores saw even more improvement, but were still just at the national mean for Hispanics. I volunteered over the summer and taught an abbreviated fall course. College Track plans another course this year and has recommended my Kaplan course to other organizations.

From the moment I began teaching, I‘ve been extremely successful with unmotivated or struggling teens. My College Track experience allowed me to measure the success in concrete terms. The majority of these students took non-honors and often remedial courses. Five students, two of them juniors, were only then taking geometry. Yet some of the highest scores and most dramatic improvements came from students who weren't in advanced programs.

I enjoy spotting exceptional underachievers and getting them into form. I thrive on working with accomplished, driven kids who see me for the testing equivalent of knocking three hundredths of a second off their time. However, I find equal satisfaction helping students who are not intellectually inclined. Many of these students treat education as an annoyance, something entirely separate from their "real" lives, yet I often spot considerable anxiety lurking behind their disdain. They have often internalized a message from their well-meaning schools: winners work hard at school, losers don't like school. Since they don't like school, they secretly worry that they are doomed to a life of failure.

I am one of only six college graduates in three generations on my father‘s side. Even in my cohort, when college had become the primary ticket to secure, career-oriented employment, fewer than half of my dozen cousins and none of my siblings or parents attended college. Yet my extended family going back through my grandfather doesn't contain a single traditional blue-collar worker. They all have white collar or solid service level jobs--bank manager, sales executive, day care provider, interior decorator, airline operations manager.

My family’s history has strongly influenced my view of education, but in an atypical fashion. I am neither the sole survivor from a low income family who seized onto education as the only ticket out, nor the product of several generations of well-educated elites. I consider education a worthwhile option, but one only tangentially related to intelligence and ability. My success with underperforming students begins with my acceptance of their values and willingness to work within their framework.

Unfortunately, today's world doesn't always have a path for smart or motivated people who skip college. This puts underachieving teens at tremendous risk; the window for recovering from flawed high school priorities is getting ever smaller. I take great pride in the number of students who won’t need a recovery window because I’ve been able to help them find a path through school, one that allows them to discover their own abilities, become vested in their progress, and set meaningful goals.

I can continue to work with these students as a tutor and instructor, but will be able to work with more of them for longer periods of time as a public school teacher. Consequently, I have decided to seek a master’s degree in education and a teaching credential.

While officially seeking a credential for teaching math, I have already passed the CSET single subject tests in History and expect to pass the English subtests later this year. Ideally, I would like to teach more than one subject at a public high school in a high-income suburban area that shares a district with a low income community. These high schools (e.g. Menlo Atherton or Palo Alto High) run essentially two schools on one campus. In my experience, low-income students have fewer opportunities to shine at excellent suburban schools, and those who aren’t motivated or struggling are overlooked because of a surfeit of stars. Consequently, these underperforming suburban students have academic profiles that look much weaker than the hardest working students at urban or other entirely low-income schools. In fact, these suburban students have comparable or even stronger actual skills and deserve the same support that they would get in weaker schools. My ultimate goal is to work with students on the lower tier of these two-tier schools teaching classes in math, English, and history. While I’m not opposed to working in entirely low income districts, I believe my experience and skill set make me a good fit for low performing students in a mixed income environment.

Regardless of where I end up teaching, one aspect of this new step is going to be a significant change: my next career, at last, will be one that education made possible.