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Meet Lindsay Strongin of Strongin Learning

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay Strongin.

Lindsay, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Tutoring actually fell into my lap after college. I was looking for a way to support myself financially while simultaneously pursuing an acting career. I started with one client who needed my help with her kids’ homework every day – so for a while I just had the one client. A close friend/family member who had her own established tutoring business called The Burbank Tutor started sending me clients she could not take on/did not have room for in her schedule, and it grew from there via word of mouth.

When I was in school, I was an overachiever in the unhealthiest way: I had to get straight A’s, not only in my classes, but on every single test or assignment, and I was obsessed with my GPA because I really believed this narrative I’ been raised on that this was the ‘correct’ order for a “happy” life: Do well in school, go to a good college, get a good job, hopefully make decent money, etc. I wanted to be an actor though, so I followed this path for the “backup” plan of being able to get a good job if I needed one. For a quick glimpse into my life at 17 years old, picture this: My high school senior year schedule began with Precalculus at 7 am, followed by all honors and AP classes, and my school day ended around 5 pm due to drama academy rehearsals. I would then first go to my college counselor’s office and work on college apps until 10pm or so (I applied to 24 colleges that year and got into all of them with UCLA as the exception and only because I auditioned into the acting school rather than leaning on my academics. If I’d just applied with academics, I think I would have gotten in). Then at 10 pm I would go home and do my homework. It was excessive, but it was important for me to feel like I was doing everything I could to get into a ‘good’ university. I did not have money for college – my parents had done their best to save up for my brother and I but, due to a number of other factors working against me, I just did not have enough money to cover even a year’s worth of tuition at any four-year university. So, I knew that I would need an academic record which would be competitive enough to get me scholarships and financial aid. I ended up going to USC (fight on), which was one of my top choices.

Part of what I do now, as a tutor, is give students the support they need to succeed in school without feeling like they have to bear so much of those burdens that I forced myself to bear. Another large part of what I do is obviously helping students simply to keep up in an institution that can be fairly unforgiving to students with varying learning styles and cognitive abilities/needs. Right now, there is a dire need for help with online learning, and having moved all of my tutoring appointments online as well, I have now expanded my services beyond the San Fernando Valley, where I began. That being said, not everybody has access to devices or internet for online learning, and many students are not financially able to afford tutoring at all. One of my top priorities going into this fall semester is to raise awareness, as well as raise funds to work toward closing this achievement gap and getting students of low income families and communities access not only to their online schooling but also to resources such as tutoring. Schools that refer students to me get a percentage of every appointment donated back to the school and students who need to earn community service credit are encouraged to reach out as we are setting up community service opportunities for students to tutor low-income peers who we assign!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest challenge I face with the students themselves is usually deadlines or parents with unrealistic expectations. Sometimes parents are really looking for a tutor to solve all the issues their child/student is having with their learning abilities over the course of one magic session and that’s just not possible. Like everything else, solid improvement in school or subjects takes time, hard work, dedication, willingness, and desire. For example, every year, without fail, a parent will come to me looking for a tutor to improve their son or daughter’s math skills for an upcoming standardized test that takes place in a month or so. After working with the student a bit, I realize their foundational math skills are so far behind that they technically have years of learning to catch up on (which really epitomizes the issues with our education system on a national level but that’s a whole other conversation), so it’s very unrealistic of them to expect that said student will pass that test with only a month to prepare/work with me. However, if people recognize the need for supplemental tutoring long term, and you come to me with a year before a standardized test or even six months, well there’s definitely more of a chance we can make significant improvement than just having one month to try to cram years worth of material into someone’s head.

Like all roads, metaphorical or not, it has been smooth in some places and filled with bumps, potholes, and unexpected twists/turns in others. It started out smooth and took off in a way that made me almost feel like “hmm, this was easy,” but as I continue to expand it into a fully functioning business, I am finding myself having to navigate completely unfamiliar territory. There have been times when I’d find myself totally bereft of tutoring work over the course of summer months. I do not get paid time off or any other benefits. I lose work/income if I cancel any appointments due to illness or take a vacation – so I rarely do that at all. I have had moments where I feel like ‘I did it, I’m a real entrepreneur!’ and I cannot even begin to describe how rewarding it is to hear my students gush about their good grades, their college acceptances, their SAT/ACT score improvements-it’s truly one of the best feelings.

Then sometimes I question myself because I’m new to running a business and I get overwhelmed and scared too. It has definitely been a marathon, not a sprint (same with my acting career). I see mistakes and failure as a learning opportunity now – which is also a lesson I carry with me into my tutoring – if I had seen things that way when I was a student, I would not have had a meltdown every time I got anything below a B on an assignment, and part of what I want to impart onto students is that they should always work hard on any assignment/test and always do their best, but also to learn from it, not let it discourage them if they did their best but still got a lower grade than they wanted. Where I come in is merging the two so that doing their best is in alignment with the goals/requirements of each assignment or test so that they can not only feel good about doing their best but then also see the positive results of their hard work with improved grades/scores/acceptances.

Please tell us about Strongin Learning.
So obviously, as a tutoring business, we help with all school subjects: English, History, Sciences, all levels/divisions of Math, even some electives. We also help with SAT/ACT prep as well as prep for other standardized tests such as the GED, CAHSEE, CHESPE. All ages are welcome so I’ve simultaneously worked with students of 6 years old, only to then help a college student the same day. In addition to the traditional school help, we also offer help with college applications, time management and organization, and absorption of material. So a lot of what I do is essentially helping students understand and complete the required material in a way that earns them decent grades or scores, but I also assist with making it through school as an “institution.”

To go into that a little further, school is an institution which operates and has operated in much the same fashion for decades, if not centuries. Many public schools in the U.S. follow traditional curricula, which are designed for the masses, not necessarily for the individual, and unfortunately, many of these traditional systems of education just don’t work for every student. So, part of what I do as a tutor is not just making the material easier to understand or complete but also giving students the tools they need to succeed within this institution. That being said, I personally think the institution itself needs a significant amount of reform, especially in Los Angeles, but in the meantime, I can, at the very least, help students get through it.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Oh boy. Surprisingly, no one has ever asked me this! I mean, there’s no way to pick one favorite, but any and every time I was ever with my friends in public, we’d always do something outlandish or zany (we were drama kids). Examples include: wearing flamboyant costumes to Ralphs for no reason, pretending one of us was dead on the Haunted Mansion Ride at Disneyland even though Disney was not paying us to perform, attempting a small scale flashmob at Universal Citywalk. We were ‘those’ kids.

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Image Credit:
Main photo is taken by Elie Hutchinson

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