Episode 95: Growing a Writing-Based Tutoring Business with Meghan Waldron of Smart Solutions Tutoring

Dr. Meghan Waldron is an educator, advisor, learner, writer, thinker and doer. When she is not advising or teaching in the university setting, Meghan is working with students on their personal writing via Smart Solutions Tutoring. Meghan is passionate about helping students find their voices, and she works tirelessly to provide opportunities for them while building their confidence. She is equally passionate about equal access to education, and she works closely with other educators on current issues in our schools and communities.

In this episode we discuss how and why she started her tutoring business, how she balances it with her teaching job and what she's learned from the two.

 

Topics Discussed:

  • How Meghan’s business has evolved over the years

  • Why Meghan decided to focus on teaching writing

  • What Meghan has learned through working in a university setting

Resources mentioned:

Related episodes and blog posts:

 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.

Dr Megan Waldron is an educator, an advisor, a learner, a writer, a thinker and a doer. When she is not advising or teaching in the university setting, Megan is working with students on their personal writing via Smart Solutions Tutoring. Megan is passionate about helping students find their voices, and she works tirelessly to provide opportunities for them while building their confidence. She is equally passionate about equal access to education, and she works closely with other educators on current issues in our schools and communities. Welcome Megan, so glad to have you on the podcast.

Meghan Waldron

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Lily Jones

Well, if you can start by telling us about your journey as an educator in whatever shape or form you'd like to go.

Meghan Waldron

Yeah, well, I did not plan on being a teacher. I'm actually the daughter of a teacher. My mom taught elementary PE so I went to college and majored in English and Spanish, and thought that I might end up being a writer or something like that. But I moved to San Diego, California, and was fortunate enough to work with adult education students, and I loved it. So I moved back east after a year or so, and kind of stumbled into a teaching role in a high need school. We had 81 languages spoken. It was a really, really awesome school, but lot of, lot of needs, a lot of students who were transient to the area, English was their second language. But I absolutely love that school. I was there for four years and then moved that was in Maryland, and then moved to Virginia, and I've either been in the public or private sector for almost two decades now. So while I didn't intend to start out as a teacher, that's definitely where I've been for most of my career.

Lily Jones

Wonderful. Yeah, my parents were teachers too, actually, at various points in their careers, and I also had kind of a moment of thinking I wouldn't be a teacher when I started college, and then found all signs pointing to teaching. For some of us, we just keep coming back.

Meghan Waldron

I know well, and I definitely think I've been fortunate that I've been in more urban environments. My more recent district is suburban, rural, so I've really been able to work in all different areas of the country. And with country and with different populations of students, which I think has given me kind of a broad, diverse view of, you know, different needs for our students, and how, regardless of where students are, there's some basic common needs that all of our kids are, you know, in need of. But then there are also a lot of different needs based on where students are located. So

Lily Jones

absolutely, such a valuable perspective. And so tell us a little bit about smart solutions tutoring. Why did you decide to start it? What is it? How has it grown?

Meghan Waldron

Yeah, so I had my oldest son, Charlie, who will be leaving for college in two weeks. So in 2006 I had Charlie. I knew I wanted to stay home with him at least for a couple years. My mom was a stay at home mom for about 10 years as well. So I had Charlie, and then I had two other boys shortly thereafter. So I stayed home with them. I started smart solutions in 2007 and used to drag Charlie to all my appointments with me in a stroller, and tried to keep him pacified while I worked with students. And again, I kind of reverted back to working with adult education and I met a mentor who was really awesome, and he was like, hey, look, there's no shortage of people who need private education to supplement what they're doing in school. So he kind of got me started. I moved to Richmond, Virginia, and there was a large tutoring company here that decided to work more on federal grants, so it kind of all fell into place. But they set me up with some local private schools, and I ran a full service tutoring company for about 10 years where we taught everything, chemistry, Japanese, you name it. This was before virtual so everything was in person. We had one Skype student that we worked with, and that was like real cutting edge that was before the pandemic. But so I had my tutoring company full service, and then when my youngest son, Holden, went to kindergarten, I went back into the public school system and moved our our company to just a writing company. So had it for about 17 ish years now. So it's really been great, because I've been able to kind of ebb and flow as my boys have grown up. And in more recent years, with the pandemic, we moved fully online into a totally different writing model, and it's really been a great way for us to be able to work with students across the country.

Lily Jones

Yeah, so interesting to hear about the evolution. And you know how it evolved, both the business but also to fit your life, which I relate to as well. Oh, you know, I left the classroom when my daughter was born, and then when my son, who's the youngest, you know, went off to school, to kindergarten. I also had more time. So I think that having something that can kind of ebb and flow along with your life can be so awesome, right? And then what about like, the focus on writing? Why did you decide to focus there?

Meghan Waldron

Yeah, so, I mean, I was an English teacher. I was also a Spanish major, so, but I would say my Spanish is like third grade level. So I taught English primarily for the 15 years that I taught in the public school setting, and I taught everything from AP English to IB English and then transitional English for students who are leaving English as a second language. So I'd really had the whole range, and I just saw a major shift in writing instruction when we moved to Chromebooks and away from like Pencil Paper Type. Assignments. Students were doing a lot of volume of writing in school, but they weren't getting a lot of writing feedback. So when I went back into the classroom, when Holden was in kindergarten, it was I'd only been out of public school for a decade, but I just saw such a massive difference in terms of one writing instruction and two writing ability. So I really wanted to focus on working with students on their writing and giving them a lot of tangible feedback, because, like I said, they were doing a lot of volume they had a lot of assignments, but they weren't necessarily getting the nitty gritty of like how to improve their writing or how to work through the writing process. So all of our students in the format we have now either work with an instructor, one on one, or they work in what we call small group learning communities, where there's up to five students, so they kind of have that peer feedback and also those soft skills that I think are really lacking with the pandemic. But more so we just saw such a huge need for writing across the curriculum. They're not just gonna need writing for English class, but they need it really for every facet of life they go into after school.

Lily Jones

Absolutely. And so thinking about students kind of transitioning into college. What do you see some common struggles are as students transition into college academics?

Meghan Waldron

Yeah, so I had a unique perspective, Lily. I moved into higher ed in December. So I left the K 12 setting, was offered a position at a large university here in Richmond, and so I took that role, and I think the biggest, I guess, I don't want to say deficit, but the biggest gap I noticed was how much High School has changed, that the college setting was not aware of things as simple as they didn't realize that students didn't use lockers anymore. And the way this kind of came about was, I was sitting in a book club, and they were talking, it was a recent book that was just published, but the author was talking about how students would gravitate from reading hundreds of pages or listening to hundreds of minutes of lecture to 1000s when they got to college. And I was thinking, oh gosh, kids don't listen to lectures anymore in high school. And I brought that up in the meeting, and they were like, What do you mean? They don't listen to lectures? And I was like, well, we have mini lessons in high school now. They don't really go for more than 15 minutes because of attention span and the advisors and the college professors were like, what? That's a thing. So it kind of led to this conversation of like, what else is different about high school now? So I think the biggest areas, I think, are we have done so much to entertain, I would say maybe in K 12 versus educate, in some regards, to really keep students engaged. And while that's awesome. That's not what happens in higher ed. So students are having trouble in like those larger lecture style settings, where it's not as hands on. They're also having harder time with really extensive passages and readings. A lot of schools do not teach full class novels anymore. The district I'm in went through a massive book banning, so teachers are very leery to even assign whole class texts for a variety of reasons. So I would say definitely longer assignments, listening for a long amount of time, 45 minutes to sit there and take notes is totally foreign to a lot of our students, and really learning how to study on their own. I think so much of the onus is put on the teacher now to make sure students understand, versus students trying to figure out what their learning style is. So there are a lot of hurdles as students enter that first semester.

Lily Jones

For sure, it's interesting to think about how high school has evolved, in a way, and that maybe that communication just stopped a little bit. So I love that conversation of just like unearthing what is it like now, and how to like, make a translator. How can we fit together? And I think even within K 12 school, sometimes it's like, Wait, what did you do last year?

Meghan Waldron

And we see that all the time, right? Like, if you're a high school teacher, like, what did they actually do in middle school? And if you're sitting in a middle school meeting, they're like, what do they do with them in elementary school? And so I think there's always a little bit of that, but there's just such a larger divide after covid, I think, in terms of what students have or have not been exposed to. And with that being said, too, we just have such an onslaught of students that have a lot of anxiety and different things like that. So I know in the district I was in one of the schools, 20% of my students had a 504 plan, which a lot of them didn't have to like present, for example, right? So when I taught a class at the University last year, Lily had many students that were like, I don't have to that were like, I don't have to present. And they were like, well, actually, you do, right? Because it's a little bit different while you're here. So there's, like, just a lot of learning curve where students before they had a lot of supports in place in higher ed. We'll get there. I just think some of those things were probably not in place just yet.

Lily Jones

Sure, and I know one area that's also massively changed recently is in AI and the use of chat GPT and generative AI, how do you think teachers and parents can navigate these waters?

Meghan Waldron

Yeah, so this is really interesting, because when chat GPT kind of emerged, it was at the very end of my K 12 time, and English teachers were absolutely freaking out at our local Governor's School. They went back to like we're doing everything on pencil and paper. Pencil and paper. Our district took like, a zero tolerance to chat GPT. And then it was interesting. The university saw it more as a cutting edge of like, hey, think about like, when the calculator came out right? Like, we didn't all stop doing math. So they saw it more of like, how can we embrace this but use it in a fair and equitable way so different departments, you. Handled it differently. I think it's also you have to look at developmentally, right, like so when you're in college, you might have already developed a lot of those writing skills. You might have research skills, maybe based on some of the things we just talked about. But in high school, it's also very developmental, so we're seeing students use it a lot of times in place of actually doing the work, right? So they're putting the prompt into chat, GPT, it's regurgitating an essay that looks very computer like in a lot of ways. And so students think they're getting away with it, but really, the trained I can pretty much tell it doesn't sound very authentic. So I know with the in the collegiate setting, we're having just honest conversations with students. Look, you're here, you're paying a lot of money for school, like you want to learn how to do this using AI is a great tool, maybe to come up with, like an outline, but using it to replace your actual thinking and learning and critical writing and organization is defeating the purpose of why you're here in the first place. So I think just having those candid talk students are going to use it, and some students are going to use it in a way that is not how we would probably want them using it in an ethical way. But I think it's just having that open dialog which is really important, and I love the focus on the bigger why of that, you know, you're here to learn these different skills, and that, yes, it can be a tool, but that you also want to be able to have control over that tool, you know, and be able to learn what you need to learn. And I think it's kind of fun. So I know when I taught, I taught journalism this past fall, so I gave my students a prompt. It was like an art prompt, and AI had to create it, and it came up with these like images where it had like a forehead, it had like an ear sticking out of it. And they're like, oh my gosh, this is so weird. And I'm like, well, it's so literal. So it's taking whatever sentence you have and it's creating it just like that. So obviously it looks weird to you. And I'm like, so think about like a skilled writer, like when you drop this prompt into AI, and I read it. It sounds weird to me, right? Because I read student writing all day long, and I know that's not really how like an 11th grader writes. And so when you kind of put it that way for students, they realize, because they think it just sounds all fancy, and then they're like, oh, wait, I didn't realize it sounded That's strange. So I think it's just having those conversations. I model it for students. I had some eighth graders. I mean, their parents are paying for private classes. They use chatgpt on like a warm up. And so I was like, hey, look, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to show it to you, and I want to so i want you to see how fast it was for me to recognize it, and why, because it was flawless. Like, you used all these sentences perfectly. And as a teacher, like, I've been reading student writing for 20 plus years, like, I know that no one's writing that perfectly in five minutes. And so I think modeling for students, like how teachers can sometimes notice that, and even if they can't how it you know, it's defeating the purpose of why they're there. So, yeah, I'm sure it will continue to get better and better as it improves the technology. But right now, there's definitely some flaws, and it's helpful to show students those.

Lily Jones

Yes, and I think the modeling is so helpful in just being able to have again, like, the bigger reasons, and to not ignore it, you know, not to have, like, a very much, like, Hey, we're not using it at all ever, you know, and to embrace the nuances and really have those conversations, yeah.

Meghan Waldron

And there's really some cool stuff chat GPT can do as well. Like, I know that we use it creatively sometimes, to have students kind of think of story ideas or story titles, and then they kind of, like, will play around with it. So I think when it's not replacing learning, that's different than you know, just like a calculator might aid a student in something, but you also need to know the skill behind it.

Lily Jones

Yes, definitely a time and a place, right? Absolutely. And so going back to starting your own business, I would love to hear kind of what you've learned through the process about yourself, or just in general.

Meghan Waldron

So it's funny. So my student teacher works with us now that there are a team of six of us that work together for smart solutions, and we're all certified teachers to our professional writers, and three have left the classroom. So there's a unique perspective of people who have that experience but are doing something else with those skills now, which is always pretty cool, three are still in the classroom. So what I've learned is that I think teachers have so much to offer, and there are so many transferable skills. So as educators, I think sometimes we feel pigeonholed that like this is what we went to school for, this is what we're good at, and you feel a lot of guilt when you want to do something else besides teaching. It's like leaving a vocation much more than leaving a job. And unless you're a teacher, you don't really know what that feels like. You feel like you're giving up on something if you do something different. So I think for me, having the business concurrently with still being a teacher was really helpful. It's not like I just ties and jumped right into doing something on my own, which can be pretty scary, and I've always done my business part time, so I have MS as well, so I have some pretty significant health needs, so I always wanted to make sure I had insurance for myself and for my kids and things like that as well. But having the business allowed me to have a lot of financial freedom in that I could take and deny contracts that work for my time and for my family. I set them in the beginning, I would just work with people non stop. I'd work on the weekends. I mean, I was running around a lot. Moving virtually has really created a lot of freedom, not just for me, but for my families as well. They'll meet with me when they're in India, they'll meet with me when they're on vacation, if they want to, right? So that creates a little bit more flexibility. But I think having the business has taught me that. And as teachers, we obviously have those skills to help people within that community setting, but we also have skills that are marketable and if used correctly and like in a way that you know works for you, there's lot of opportunity. And I think a lot of times we sell ourselves short that I don't know like moving to the higher ed setting. People always say, Oh my gosh. How do you know how to like you do stuff so fast, you can multitask. And I'm, like, every teacher I know can do what I'm doing, trade and being, you know, wearing so many hats all day long. Um, so, yeah, so I think, like, when I first started with the business, like I said, I tried to do everything all the time. I tried to, like, I worked by myself, and maybe had, like, one or two other people. At one point, I had 30 teachers, and that was a lot, and my kids were little, and then when I moved back into the classroom, I really just created boundaries for me. Like, this is when I'm going to work. This is how I'm going to set it up. This is the type of work I like doing. When you work privately, you can kind of choose what you want to do and what you don't want to do, which, as a lot of times, you know with teaching, like, you don't really have a lot of choice with that. So I really encourage teachers to have something else in addition to teaching that helps kind of build that confidence and remind them that so many of those skills you use every day are so so so transferable to other industries.

Lily Jones

There are so many transferable skills, like you said, like teachers are doing impossible jobs and doing all the things, and I think sometimes we don't even have the time to sit and reflect on all those things and how those might transfer. So I love your own experience of realizing all this and just reminding teachers of all the many things that they can do, right and so along with that, if there are teachers listening who might want to start their own business, what advice would you give them?

Meghan Waldron

I think it's good to start out talking to people that are already doing something like not reinventing the wheel. As I mentioned in the beginning, I met a person who was running like a brick and mortar tutoring company in Northern Virginia. When I first started, I knew I didn't want to do that because my kids were little and I didn't want to be like housed somewhere, so I kind of was just on the move meeting with people, but I think learning what you like and what you don't like, and going having a mentor that can really kind of coach you through some of the things that have worked for them. And like I said, there's so much business like in terms of opportunity, I think locally and now, obviously, with the web, you can kind of be anywhere at any time. So I think people who have a pretty strong, established business are willing to kind of share some of those tricks of the trade. It's not they're really not in competition, because oftentimes for us, even, like, we're at a waiting list right now, which is awesome, right? Like, I would rather have people waiting and have six great teachers and to have 20 teachers, that would be like a mediocre product, right? So I think finding somebody that's doing something similar and really talking with them the best I guess, opportunity for us has been networking. We really do not advertise very much. We started locally and had a really strong group of families that used us, and then they told us their cousins about us and their neighbors. So it's kind of organically grown. But I think that that helps to find somebody who's kind of already doing it, not reinvent the wheel and talk with them for some guidance.

Lily Jones

I absolutely agree. I mean, I think the more that you can learn from people who've gone before you and not feel like you have to figure it all out on your own. It kind of fits with the networking too, because then you build your own professional network through doing that, and really can see what's possible and find help along the way. Sure, wonderful. Well, thank you so much. Megan, can you tell folks where they can connect with you?

Meghan Waldron

Yeah,sure. So the best place to connect with us is through our website. Our Instagram and Facebook are linked there, but it's just smart solutions. Yeah, and everything is there.

Lily Jones

Wonderful. And we'll put the links in the show notes as well. Thanks again.

Meghan Waldron

I appreciate it. Thanks, Lily.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lily Jones