We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jay Van Raalte. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jay below.

Hi Jay, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I started teaching almost by accident. Growing up, I attended a Montessori school, where multi-grade classrooms encouraged students to help each other while learning themselves. As I sailed through high school math and started dual enrollment classes at the College of Charleston, classmates asked me to help them more formally, and my fledgling tutoring business was born.
At first, I thought everyone understood math the way I did, and just needed some extra explanation on tricky topics. It rapidly became apparent that I had a very unusual relationship with math: growing up with two college math professors for grandparents, I had a much deeper and more holistic understanding of what “math” was than that of my peers. Math is the native language of quantities and, more importantly, of relationships. Math gives us the vocabulary to express the logical framework that underpins our entire world, not some arbitrary collection of rules and operations.

That’s when tutoring started to morph from an after school side gig into something I was passionate about. No one is born speaking English (or any other language) any more than they are born understanding math. In fact, our intuitive grasp of quantities and relationships is perhaps even more innate than our ability to describe them with language. But most people aren’t immersed in that language the way they are in their native spoken language. But by the time we’re very young, most of us have already developed the ability to use language as a tool for expression, rather than a challenge in and of itself. Think about it – when we speak, we think about the idea we want to convey and the words more or less select themselves. There is no reason math can’t feel just as instinctive, except that most people don’t grow up with math professor grandparents that help them get there. I want to be that person for students who don’t have my grandparents (which, other than my three cousins, is all of them).

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I provide 1:1 tutoring/instruction, in math and several other specific areas. I grew up doing all my math homework with my grandpa – every single day from 7th grade through my college math degree – not because I couldn’t have done it on my own, but because it was more fun to have a buddy. It also taught me invaluable lessons about how we do math. “Math is not a spectator sport” is an oft-repeated phrase among math professors, but Grampy took it one step further: math became a contact sport. He and I were equals, arguing our way through tricky problems and logical conundrums. It forced me to develop a much deeper understanding of what I was learning, because simply writing an answer on my homework sheet wasn’t enough. I had to be able to explain it, defend it, admit when I was wrong, and be brave enough to call him out when I thought he was wrong.

There is no way to replicate that experience in a classroom. I’ve had many amazing teachers throughout my school experience, but the very nature of classroom teaching doesn’t allow for such an in-depth, personal relationship. I try to tailor my approach to each student’s individual needs, to meet them where they’re at, to understand their starting point and their goals, and chart a course to get us there. More than anything, I want them to view me as a teammate, a resource, someone who is working toward the answer with them, rather than the final authority on whether a particular answer is right or wrong. 2+2 isn’t 4 because I said it is, but because it’s true. I don’t want them to just accept it, I want them to believe it.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

My great-grandpa had a saying: if you take care of the little things along the way, the big things will take care of themselves. I don’t put a lot of conscious effort into building a reputation. I focus on providing the greatest help possible to every single student and figure that over time, word of mouth will take care of the rest. I’ve been lucky enough that it seems to be working! Every year, I get more inquiries from people who have heard about me from their friends, or from a teacher at their school, or from someone commenting my name online. I don’t take that for granted. I also feel lucky to have built lasting relationships with students and even whole families. There are students I’ve taught for years at this point, and plenty of younger siblings who have signed up as they graduate into trickier classes. It’s special to be able to watch kids grow up and, hopefully, to support them along the way. It’s also special to teach an elementary school student how to add fractions and teach their parent how to do grad school calculus at the same time!

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

By design, my business does not have multiple revenue streams. I started this tutoring business with a core idea – to approach every student as an individual and focus on teaching that student. Again, math is something that has to be wrestled with individually. For that reason, I have never tried to, and do not intend to, develop a mass marketing approach, large group course, a standard “curriculum”, or a textbook. Helping students learn individually is the heart of my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jayvanraaltetutoring.com

Image Credits
Mike Ledford