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

Alright, Ashley thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

During the 2017-2018 school year, I co-created a math intervention and tutoring program at the high school I worked at in order to help students who were unable to graduate because they struggled to pass their math classes. Nearly every public high school nowadays has some form of a credit intervention program to help students earn missing high school credits during their normal school day. These programs have existed for quite some time, since high schools are in the business of teaching kids and ultimately having them graduate. Kids were earning credits in all subjects and graduating, but math was by far the subject and courses creating the most obstacles for them to pass in order to earn missing credits. In 2017, the math department chair and I put our heads together and came up with a solution of working with every student who was deficient in math credits at the school through their individualized math credit recovery program. Students’ individual math credit recovery plan was created by school counselors, and then communicated to me and my co-worker in the math lab to setup and execute for the students. We essentially put teachers who were skilled, experienced, and knowledgeable in mathematics in charge of helping and guiding kids through math courses they had already been unsuccessful in. We converted a classroom into a one-stop-shop for math support, tutoring, intervention, and testing center. We called it “the math lab” and roughly 200 kids per day, 10th-12th grade, came into the lab for support for one or more class periods per day as part of their regular school schedule. The first year after re-inventing the credit recovery program to work with kids in a specialized math center brought a 94% increase in math credits earned by students at the school, which drastically raised the graduation rate. In addition to serving students throughout the six class periods during a normal school day, the math lab also provided tutoring services before school and during lunch. Students were free to drop in, unscheduled, to ask questions or receive extra math help as they desired. I was in charge of scheduling the math department’s two dozen math teachers for unpaid shifts and cover tutoring duty in the math lab each morning and each day at lunch. I had to design the tutoring structure to ensure an “upper level” math teacher was always paired with a lower level teacher to be able to help both Pre-Calculus students who may arrive, as well as 9th grade Algebra 1 students. I also had to schedule teachers fairly and equally throughout the entire school year, skipping the first week of school in each semester. I sent out reminders to teachers about their tutoring duty, juggled people’s tutoring “shift changes” if and when needed and followed up with teachers when they maybe missed a tutoring shift. This intervention model was very successful and has since been replicated by other high schools. I left public school teaching in January of 2020 and my former co-worker has drastically expanded the overall intervention model, both math and other subjects, at the school and it is still realizing amazing success.

When I “left the classroom” as a public-school math teacher and interventionist in early 2020. I had nearly 13 years of math teaching/curriculum/intervention/school experience and had worked with thousands of students. Two months later, COVID arrived and schools and math learning collectively came to a halt for most kids, which I knew was only going to exacerbate kids’ math struggles. In early 2021, I began missing teaching math and I knew from family and friends how much kids were struggling with school and math during quarantine and COVID and online school models. But reentering the public-school teaching climate was not at all desirable to me. I decided to essentially replicate the math lab support center that I had started in a public school but do it as a private business helping kids and parents after school and evenings. The logistics and educational goals between the math lab at my previous high school and The Math Lab are different, but the overall mission of supporting kids learning math is exactly the same as what I set out to do back in 2017 in a public school.

Ashley, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was previously a math teacher in public schools for nearly 13 years and have a strong passion for teaching math. When I was a teacher, I always said math is the only subject I would ever teach, but I did end up getting certified to teach Economics and also taught a personal finance/financial literacy class for about 8 years. I also have a Master’s degree in Education with a specific focus on curriculum design. I provide a personalized, completely tailored math support solution for kids in 2nd-12th grade. I’ve worked with gifted kids, below grade level kids, taught “regular” math classes, kids with learning disabilities, kids with mental health challenges, and many other circumstances. The unique value I provide to clients is my first-hand experience in the classroom trenches with not only kids, but also kids’ teachers. I’ve worked with kids, teachers, parents, and children all to accomplish the goal of furthering math education for kids in school I can help bridge the communication gap between a child’s parents and their teacher – I know the general structure of your child’s math class and usually can help explain the purpose of teacher assignments and decisions about grades, tests, etc. to kids and parents.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients has been specific school district communication avenues. These parents are looking for supplemental educational or recreational opportunities for their children outside of school hours.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

The most effective strategy for growing clientele has been twofold: keep existing clients, and continue to market my business in the community to create awareness.

Contact Info:

• Website: themathlabaz.com
• Instagram: themathlabaz
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themathlabaz
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/the-math-lab/