Ever since college, math teacher Lisa Holland has been one to help her peers. Today, she continues her tutoring job by helping students prepare for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and for math classes they are struggling in.

“It was just a natural thing that everybody in college needed help with their math,” Mrs. Holland said.  “So I kind of just fell into doing it.  I can set my own hours, and it keeps me up to par with the rest of the math classes that I’m not teaching.”

At times, Mrs. Holland gathers ideas to bring to her own classroom by looking at the SAT prep questions that her tutoring clients have.  Having the tutoring job on the side gave Mrs. Holland an advantage when it came to preparing her Algebra 2 and Precalculus students for the future.

“Initially, I think it helped me become a better teacher,” Mrs. Holland said.  “I would tutor so many different learning styles, so I really saw the differences.  Just seeing what the other schools are doing [is helpful].”

Making her hours optimal for students, Mrs. Holland offers her tutoring services in the evening and sometimes on weekends.  Because of this, certain families were often repeated customers with Mrs. Holland.

“What’s interesting is when I get a student, I’ll have the brother and take him all the way through high school, and then I would get the sister,” Mrs. Holland said.  “I just get to be very, very good friends with the family; I’m like a utility for them.”

In addition, Mrs. Holland was able to use her tutoring job to teach her son how to do advanced math at an early age.

“I loved that he saw as a little tiny kid me sitting at a table with a student, with a book open, and we are literally studying how to work,” Mrs. Holland said.  “I think it taught him the work ethic and that people are paying for that.  I used to charge $60.00 an hour, and when [my son] was really little, he would say ‘Mom, do you realize you’re making a dollar a minute?’  I loved that he understood that as a little kid.”