Meet Teresa and Mark
Teresa grew up traveling internationally on the largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world – with Mercy Ships. Living with such a wide variety of cultures informed her love of a close knit community focused on connection. This fueled her work with students once settled back in the U.S. The international travel of those early years taught her how connected we all really are. Our modern lifestyle often misses the importance of community, culture and connection.
Bright Heart Learning (formerly Poulsbo Tutoring) began around her kitchen table when a local family asked for help. It was with these initial students that her model Connection Before Content™ was born. Every day she was seeing many other concerns showing up at the table that had nothing to do with the work in their backpacks. By attending to these deeper needs through connection first, she was able to weave their learning in and around the concerns that easily could have derailed them completely. By focusing on the connection first, she was able to help them navigate their education - and after 6 years see them graduate high school.
It wasn’t long before more families were calling and signed on to work with her. Today there are nearly 20 on staff- including Teresa’s husband, Mark.
Our tutoring model flips the traditional model upside down! Often our students arrive to their sessions with big emotions! We know that big emotions shut down cognition, so by approaching sessions with connection first, we can help students bring their cognition back online and then effectively support their academics! Our staff are all trained with our “connection first” approach.
Generally, education is content focused - for good reason - there are important things we must learn. However, talk to any students today, and you’ll find out they are carrying tremendous loads – big and small. Could be a divorce, death of a family member, long term deployments, emotional crisis at home, trauma from bullying and things like ADHD or learning disabilities. Some are stressed over smaller things like the upcoming Prom, moving to a new state or their driving test. Often they’ve been labeled, misunderstood, and overlooked to serve the greater good of the classroom pace.
When students experience connection, they are able to create more bandwidth for their school work, get more done, move faster, and have more clarity. Improvements come quickly - and getting better grades is second to a boosted confidence and self-esteem. Tutoring gives us the unique position of sitting one-on-one with our students which allows for more connection than a traditional classroom can provide.
Teresa really struggled with math as a young student. She felt so dumb and sure that understanding math was for everyone but her. It wasn’t until college that she connected with a tutor who sat with her, went at her pace and graciously allowed her to work out the problems and build her math skills. With support she did amazing! Not only was she good at math, but she also enjoyed it and later was teaching it! She completely re framed those early beliefs about herself because of that connection and support. And now Poulsbo Tutoring does that for all students!
We believe in Connection first, every time, every session, every day, on purpose!