Episode Transcription

25: When Your Passion Drives You For More Than the Classroom with Kristy Haworth

  Hello, lovely lady. Welcome to Classroom To Business, the podcast designed specifically for teachers working to become successful business women and creating financial freedom and lifestyle flexibility. I'm Kirsty Gibbs. Business coach and mentor for educators and teachers just like you, who are ready to step away from the classroom and create something more.

The Classroom to Business Podcast is committed to helping you grow your business, break down those barriers to success, and replace your teaching salary without having to work more hours. It's time for you to find freedom and start being your own boss so you can once again enjoy what you do and wake up each morning loving life.

Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of Classroom to Business. I have got a really lovely special guest today. Kristi Howeth from All Kids Can Education. Kristy was a classroom teacher like most of us, she has left the classroom and started her own tutoring business. And Kristy, I'm just gonna dive right in and ask you to explain.

The business model that you currently have for your tutoring business. 'cause as we know, there are so many different ways that we can run a tutoring business. So what have you got going on for you at the moment in your tutoring business? Hi Kirsty, and well, what we are at the moment is we've got four of us, so I'm included.

I've got one casual teacher in Victoria who's got a caseload of around about 17 or 18 a week, and then I've got another teacher here five minutes from my house. And we all teach in our home clinics. And so she's got around about 15 students per week. And then I've got another teacher in Manley West as well, five minutes away, and she's just building up her caseload at the moment, so she's probably at about eight at the moment.

And myself, I'm teaching just two kids each day for three days. So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Yeah. So I've intentionally scaled back on my hours because I've got some other things that I'm putting my energy into at the moment. And just for our listeners, so you said you've got one lady in Melbourne or one tutor in Melbourne, and you said whereabouts are you though?

Yeah, so we are in Manly West. Yeah, so Manly West in Brisbane, in Queensland is the three of us. We've got another teacher in Hampton in Melbourne, so that's pretty cool. Just side note there that you can be in a completely different state. Be, you know, be running your business over different territories or in states and areas.

How do you manage that? So you said that there're, you know, you've got a small team. How do you manage your staff and the going inbetweens of different places? Yep. So the reason why I've got a teacher in Melbourne is because that's where I'm from. So during 2020 during the Melbourne Lockdowns, my husband and I decided to change things up and we wanted to move to Queensland.

So I was a little bit concerned about how I was going to allow my business to keep on going through those times. So obviously like most tutors, we flipped to online and did a little bit of a quick upskill in how to teach kids on the computer. And then, so I spoke to the parents of my caseload. At the time, I was probably teaching around about 20 kids per week at that time, maybe 15.

And they were happy for me to continue online with them while I made the transition from Melbourne to Brisbane. And there was only two weeks that I took off when we went into Hotel Lockdowns, so the transition was really quite smooth. But then by the time I got to Brisbane, I really wanted to build a caseload in Brisbane.

And so just coincidentally, I had someone email me who had moved from the States to Bentley where I was at the time. And said, Hey, do you have any students that I can take on and can I work with you? So I moved my caseload over to her, and then I built up my caseload here in Brisbane. And then since then we've brought on two extra teachers.

We've had other teachers kind of pop in and out, but these two teachers are who we have at the moment. That's so cool. Awesome. They're all awesome. They're a really great team and we all, the way that we do it is through Teach Works. We use a scheduling system. We have all of our data in there. We use Slack as well.

So we communicate quickly and efficiently with Slack as well. In the moment, if my teachers need to ask me something about some particular thing, they can just send me a Slack message and then I can get back to them straight away. So that's kind of how we keep that tight knit communication going. That's awesome.

And I mean, just the fact that you just happen to find someone, like I am such a big believer that things happen, you know, for a reason and obviously you were meant to meet that person at the right time. That's so cool. So rewinding a little bit, what made you start your tutoring business in the first place?

Yep. So I was a classroom teacher in BlackRock and I was. Teaching for six years. From the beginning of my teaching, I started noticing kids that were just oddly not picking up reading and writing like all of the other kids were. And so I made friends with the intervention teacher. That was at that school and she started teaching me about phonics and what to do when you identify kids that are not succeeding as you would think that they would, so they, the struggling kids, what to kind of look out for and all of that.

And so once I would identify those kids within my grade, I would flag those kids with her, and then they would go into intervention and work on explicit instruction, systematic phonics with her. So through speaking to her, she also had a private practice and so she became my mentor at the time and showed me how you can really run your own business outside of the classroom.

And she took me under her wing and she took me to her place where she teaches and she showed me the resource that she uses. She was using a lot of Nessie at the time and she. Opened my eyes to a whole nother way of teaching that I previously hadn't been taught in my undergrad. So that was really the whole beginnings of my journey into explicit, direct systematic phonics.

That's awesome. I think, you know, we talk about this all the time. We could literally have. Five days worth of podcasts about that problem that you faced and the fact that none of us are actually trained in this, in our, you know, when we go to university, which is really quite sad. But was it just that you sort of saw that gap?

Like was it a. You just knew. You knew that this was what you wanted to do, or did you sort of sit on the fence for a while? Were you a bit worried? You know, did you have that fear or did you just know, yep, I wanna get out of the classroom. I want to put this into practice. It took me a long time from that first classroom that I had when I first started teaching and then working with my mentor at the time and sort of just taking on information as I went because I was a hundred percent all the way into.

Systematic phonics, like I knew that that was the way that we needed to teach these kids because I saw that it worked and I saw that what I was doing within the classroom, which was a balanced literacy approach. So a little bit of phonics and a little bit of whole language. I. That was just conflicting for kids and it wasn't working for those kids that were not succeeding and they were the kids that I wanted to help the very most.

Of course, they were the bottom group, you know, in guided reading, which is what I was taught to do, which I now know is not evidence-based and not the way we should be helping kids. Really just a journey gradually. It wasn't something that I knew, okay, I'm leaving the classroom like. Tomorrow. It was more that I knew I wasn't gonna be a classroom teacher for more than six years.

And I actually said that from the very beginning. I said, classroom teaching for me will be a short term thing, six years, and then I'll find something to divvy off with from there. And that's what happened. And it was my last year of teaching and in that sixth year, and I fell pregnant with my eldest. And I had, I'm getting emotional.

I had a little boy in my grade whose name was Bo, and he was such a charmer. He was absolutely gorgeous. Like just really charismatic. All the kids loved him, you know, he was just like gorgeous little kid. And they were all gorgeous. But this little guy stuck out to me. And he couldn't read or write for the life of him.

He was struggling hard and I was worried. 'cause I'd seen in the past, kids would struggle and then they'd try and they'd try and they'd try and the teachers would try and try and put all the, in their best efforts as well. But it would all fall flat because the instruction that was being delivered wasn't effective for that particular child because most likely they had dyslexia.

So, We know that the way that we need to teach kids with dyslexia is through structured literacy, and I didn't have that training back at that time, but what I did have was sort of bits and pieces. So I would speak to his mom, both Mom and I would say, is it okay? He was here early in the mornings anyway, so I said, can he come into my classroom half an hour before school starts and maybe we can go through toe by toe.

So, Toe by toe is just a little red book, and it is based on systematic literacy. So it teaches kids systematically how to decode and blend sounds together to read words. So you know, that's a great way to go about it because I had nothing else. I had no other training at that time. And so we put in hours and hours and hours and hours and he put in those hours.

This little kid, you know, he was so motivated. And what I was gonna say before is that I was worried he was gonna switch off because I'd seen so many other kids keep trying and then eventually when it doesn't work, they switch off. They're like, no, I'm done. I'm dumb. They fall in with the wrong crowd and we know that high percentage of the prison population are dyslexic.

'cause they go down these wrong paths. They go down the. These rabbit holes where they try to cope, they externalize their difficulties. So I was worried that was gonna happen to him, and I don't think that I made much of an impact with Bo because of the fact that I didn't have the training at the time.

Sure, toe by toe was good, but it wasn't enough and so I was pregnant at the time I left. I had my eldest son and I also enrolled in training for Macquarie University. So they are amazing. They practice evidence-based practice and they teach evidence-based practice. I did a postgraduate certificate in special education specializing in learning difficulties and.

From there. I also did my M S L accreditation, so multi-sensory structured language. And then I also did Orton-Gillingham training, so I kind of jumped ahead quite a few years there. But I had my second son as well during that time of when I was home with my first son, as well as my second now. And I was studying the whole time and I started to bring in students and start my private practice that way, so I wasn't already, I.

On a wage. So to me, while I was studying and upskilling in those areas, it was really just a way of practicing what I was learning. And I ended up naming my second son, Bo, because Aw. Yeah. It was a really, a really impactful experience for me to, I needed to know how to help those kids that were falling through the cracks.

So, yeah. I'm gonna make me emotional. I think it's funny because I think as educators I'm, you know, we didn't plan to talk about this, but there are always those kids who make such an impact on us. Like, oh, I'm gonna need to pause this recording soon. I had a little boy, very similar when I was teaching in London, and sort of same, same but different.

And the school that I was in was. You know, every child knew at least two languages, some three, so it was Arabic, English, and sometimes French. And that was, you know, you'd sit down for the parent teacher interviews and you actually had to use the child as the interpreter because the parent couldn't speak English for some of the times.

And some of these kids had come from homes. That were kind of a thing messed up. I'm going to say like that. You know, this one particular little boy in my class, he sounds like your bow just beautiful. And so, you know, just you, you could see him shining and wanting to have fun, this great personality, but he struggled in class.

He struggled to, you know, compose himself, for example, when we all had to sit still, those things were hard for him, but there wasn't really any. Support from home to help follow things up there. And he used to run away a lot. So I mean, well, even before that, he would come to school. Seven o'clock in the morning without breakfast and I would be at school, you know, just after that time.

And so I started bringing food for him because he had, it was that sort of story, that sort of background that he was coming from. And yeah, then his mom and dad had split up and then his mom remarried a man and she was the second wife in the same house. So he now, you know, it was just so hard for this little boy and this, he was grade four and you could see everything just.

So confusing for him and overwhelming, and there was this one particular day he used to run a lot. He would run away from class and over there all of the buildings are, you know, sort of one massive big building and all the classrooms are in there. So he would run out of the door and just hide somewhere in the building.

We always knew he was within the massive big walls somewhere, but this one particular day we had an excursion. And we were walking down the road and he had some sort of altercation with one of the little girls in the class. He went to run because that's what he did, and he ran out onto the road and I just get goosebumps thinking about there was a garbage truck coming and he, I do not know.

How that garbage truck stopped in time, but it was so scary, so terrifying, and so we got back to school following that. The head teacher said, the principal rang the mom and said, you know, we have to come in for a chat. And she would never come in. She would always say, no, I'm too busy. Send him home. And he had to get on a bus with his older brother from the south of London to the north of London, just by himself, no adults.

And this day the head teacher said, no, we are not letting him go home until you come up here and have this meeting. So anyway, we're sitting in this meeting with him, mom, the head teacher, the little boy and me. And we're going through this like we have to do something, you know, like something has to change, trying to support her and him at the same time, and the mom turns around and says to him, See what you've done.

See what you've done the next time, social welfare come knocking. I'm gonna let them take you, right? Oh, and I'm just like, yeah, I'm gonna get emotional too. Why should a kid this age even know what social welfare is? And then your mom is threatening to let them take like, oh, okay. So anyway, it's just, I think so many of us as teachers have been through, wow.

Look at us both today, have been through these times where, you know, we've been so impacted. Yeah. By either kids or the system or, yeah. That and I. That that does spark in us something extra to wanna do something more. Like, I just wanted to take him home. I just wanna come home with me and live with me and you know, I'll do whatever I can.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And that's definitely been a part of me as a teacher, you know, always. I've had a, I'm gonna say a soft spot for kids who I kind of act out sometimes because. I know that there's something else underneath that there's something else going on. Mm-hmm. And you know, it is the same for you.

There's something else going on and you're just drawn to that to try and help. And I do think that that's what makes us such passionate people and good at what we do. And so thank you for sharing. And I'm sure that everyone listening has probably got that one bow or the little boy I worked with ham.

That little kid, that little experience that has made such an impact in their life and whether we decide to stay in the classroom or whether we go out and start our own businesses. I think that's the core of it, that like everyone talks about your why all the time. Why do you do things? You know, what's your deep why?

But once you've had a moment like that, I think that really. It pulls you, it plays on you without you even realizing it. Okay, so let's lift it a little now. What do you love most about your tutoring business? Owning a tutoring. Not just working in a tutoring business. 'cause I know that. We love being able to make an impact, but actually owning your own tutoring business.

What lights you up about that? What do you love? What are the the real cons? Pros? What are the real pros? Yeah. For me, I am really passionate about working with parents because I know that parents are the ones that we can work with that will have the most impact on their own child. So it's all. Very good and well to work with the schools as a tutor and try to align and collaborate with the schools.

And I have, we do that a lot, but we also find that often because the instruction is not aligned, the communication falls flat because you just can't align balanced literacy and structured literacy because it's, you know, you can't, it's, they're opposing so, I find the biggest impact then in that case, is to focus my energy on helping the parents understand why their child is struggling and what they can do to help their own child.

That's what I love about having a tutoring business. I. It's really getting down to a grassroots level and going, okay, so they're not getting that support that they need in the school. Maybe this, and not through any fault of the school's their teacher's fault, because we know that they don't get this sort of training in their undergrads.

But when we sort of pair it back and we think, well, where can I make the biggest impact? It's with the parents. Mm-hmm. So that's what I love the most. That's cool. That's so good. And you know, there are so many different styles of tutoring businesses. Mine for example, was very much parents would drop and go.

So we started providing homework, but parents just wouldn't do it. Too busy, whatever. And so we changed things up a little to try and actually get the students in to see us more regularly, because we knew they weren't doing anything at home. But if you can. Do what you are doing and really have those parents on board.

You know, some tutors actually have the parents sit in on the session. Personally, I hated having somebody looking over my shoulder, but some people really like that because then the parents can actually figure out what's going on and they know what to do at home. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges then of having and running your own tutoring business?

I'm gonna have to think about that because, oh, I know the money side of things because I'm pretty convinced that I have dyscalculia myself. I was never taught how to work with numbers when I was a kid, so processing numbers and me. Fall flat when I get overwhelmed. So numbers is the biggest area that I have been upskilling in lately to make sure that I don't let that be the death of me, because as business owners, we've gotta be on top of our numbers.

We've gotta know what we're doing. We've gotta be analytical on our numbers so that we know then how to improve our business. And the figures tell us that. So that has been the biggest challenge for me is that that side of the money side of things, I think you and so many other tutors. It is definitely one of the biggest challenges.

I know that just hopefully my mom's not listening to this episode, but she's a teacher as well and she teaches grade two at the moment and she had prep for a very long time and preschool, you know, before it was prep in Queensland and she is terrified of teaching anywhere beyond, you know, Year three.

Year four is a push because she's, like I said, why, you know, they're actually at a good age then the kids wise, you know? 'cause you can start to have some fun and a bit of banter and whatever. And she said, no, it's the maths. I'm worried about the maths. And it's so funny because so many people I speak to say the same thing.

And that is such a massive part of business. You know, business is making money and so. You know, well done to you for finding out that that's an area to work on. And then actually putting in the work, because some people just bury their heads in the sand and, you know, sorry, not interested. It's too hard.

Basket. And then, and I did though, Kirsty, I've been doing this for the past 10 years and I've been doing it okay. But now I just wanna do it better. Yeah. And so I'm ready now to step up to that and to improve that because I know what. A great impact that'll have on my business. Mm-hmm. But I buried my head really, really far deep, deep because I didn't wanna deal with it.

I kind of just made everything kind of logical and yeah, that'll do. Of course, I've got a bookkeeper and an accountant and they do the most, you know, part of it all. But handling the figures yourself and knowing everything yourself is what I've come to know as vital now. So moving forward, that's, I'm kind of ready to go there.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, well, like I said, well done for taking your head out of the sand, doing something about it. Now you haven't just got a tutor in business, you have got an online program as well. So do you wanna tell us a little bit more about that and then also what made you, you know, go into that and create that extra product?

Yep. So I got to the point in my business where I was like, well, how am I gonna scale this? Because teaching one-to-one is not scalable, unless, of course you can do groups and groups is not really where my head was at. I've always been more of a one-on-one therapy teacher, and so I didn't wanna also hire more staff because I thought I've got three amazing staff.

I've had staff. Previous to that, and they've all been great, but they go, they leave and they've got their own things going on, which is normal and great and fine for them. And so I thought, well, how can I sustainably grow my business on a scalable level without having to rely on anyone else and be able to make a bigger impact doing what I'm doing outside of just my neighborhood?

And I thought, well, I don't wanna really go down the online because that's still one-on-one, and that's not really scalable. It does get me outta my neighborhood, but it's not the kind of scale that I was looking for. So I started looking into online courses and I joined a online course group, so through Tina Tower, her Empire Builder, and I just started upskilling and learning as much as I could about what it.

Is to create online courses and what kind of impact could I make from scaling it that big? And how many parents could I engage and help at a grassroots level? 'cause that's my passion in my business now. So how can I transfer that into a larger scale? So that's where I've been for the last six months, is really sort of setting up all of the backend of the digital side of my business.

And I have been, and it takes a long time setting up all of the systems, upskilling and marketing, doing. Obviously socials is a part of that email marketing, learning about copy. Like it's huge. And I loved that 'cause I love studying and it kind of felt like I was studying again 'cause I was learning so many new things and that sparked me.

So now I'm at the point where we've got a name. So we are starting off with Step Into Literacy, and so Step Into Literacy is an online parent empowerment course. So it's going to help parents understand the unraveling of what's going wrong with their child's literacy at the moment. Why aren't they succeeding?

Why are they struggling and what do we need to do to help them? So it's a little bit of a stepping into a little bit of an awakening around the education system and what their child actually needs and what the key to their confidence is. So in that course, that's what I'll be delivering that message of.

So what's going on? And how can you help your own child? So, To be so well informed that no one can or wants to argue with you. I love the quote. Anyway, I just love it and I've always had it up in my tutoring centers because you have to be so well informed that no one wants to argue with you or can argue with you.

You've gotta know what's going on. And so that's what I wanna give parents, and that's what Step Into Literacy is designed for. I love that I spoke about this on a previous podcast, but one of my deeper whys is to help shake up the education system and empower. Education outside of the classroom, and it's like a double-edged sword because I feel like we're taking good teachers out of the classroom, which is not great because we all have our own kids still in the classroom.

But I think what you are doing by empowering parents, helping them to stand up and advocate for their child is. A really crucial part in that change in the education system because at the moment, even as a teacher, you know, I know you and I have had discussions before about this, but even as a teacher, I'm quite nervous to say anything to my school because I don't wanna be that parent.

And that's even with an education background and all of those years of experience, I could only imagine what it would be like as a parent who. Doesn't have that background to try and stand up for their child and say, Hey, I actually, why are you doing this? Or can we do this instead? Because a school is just probably going to come back and have their one sided view of things and you've got nowhere to go.

But if you are educating and empowering parents, then all of a sudden they've got that confidence and that lift and that knowledge. So I think that's fantastic. I think that's really great. And it is common. What you said before with a tutoring business, unless you, yeah, one-on-one definitely hits that income ceiling a lot sooner.

Taking staff on helps you grow, but only at the margin of staff of, you know, session fee, taking away staff costs. So that's smaller increments of growth groups. Great way to grow if that's what you know, you're into. And all of the ladies that I work with, when they get to a certain point in their business, which it sounds like where you've got to as well, I say, okay, how else can we make some revenue now?

How else can we impact a wider. Audience, more students in other areas and an online course, parent workshops, all those sorts of things are such a great way to do that. So, you know, I think it's so important for people listening to this podcast to think about that. Think how far have I got, or how far have I come in my business, my tutoring business, Can I take this a step further without trading that time for money and impacting more than one person per hour?

So I'll wrap it up there. I think that's a really great place to finish off. Knowing what you've got in the pipeline, if people would like to follow along, checkout the course that you are doing, and you know, just come and cheer you along, where can they find you at? So my handle for Instore is at All Kids Can Education, and that's the same for Facebook, and our webpage is allKidscan.com.au

Beautiful. I'll put those links in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Christie, for your time today, and thank you everyone for bearing with us through our emotional moments. This is the first time I've had tears on a podcast, but we're definitely putting it out there because I think it's real and it just shows that we are real people at the bottom or the heart of everything.

We do what we do to help our students, help our learners, help our kids, and even where I sit now, Yes, I'm not working with kids one-on-one, but I'm helping other ladies, you know, like Kristy and everyone else who are working with those students. So it really, you know, I think once it's there, it's always there and it's very hard to shake.

So thank you again, Kristy. Thank you for your time. Thank you for being so open and honest. And yeah, it's been great to have you. Thanks, Kirsty. If you enjoyed this episode today, I would absolutely love for you to leave a review. It only takes a minute, and if you haven't yet subscribed, make sure you do to ensure that you never miss an episode.

Finally, if you want to know more about what we do, head over to the website, kirstygibbs.com or check out the link in the show notes below. Thanks for listening. It's so great to have you here.