Our Story
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 variety of cultures informed her love of a close-knit community focused on connection. This fueled her work with students once back in the U.S.
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 Connection Before Content™ model was born. Every day Teresa saw many 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 wove their learning around the concerns that easily could have derailed them. A connection-first approach helped them navigate their education and eventually graduate high school.
It wasn’t long before more families called and signed on to work with Teresa. Today Bright Heart Learning has 20 experienced tutors and education professionals on staff, including Teresa’s husband, Mark.
Mark worked as an electrical contractor for over 35 years. Upon retirement, he joined the team and works with middle school math students, cognitive training programs and coordinates the Listening Program. He loves making significant and meaningful connections with his students, helping grow their confidence, celebrating every win, and seeing improved self-esteem.
Why Bright Heart Learning
Our tutoring model flips the traditional model on its head. Often our students arrive to their sessions with big emotions, which shut down cognition. By approaching sessions with connection first, we help students bring their cognition back online and then effectively support their academics. Our staff are all trained with our Connection Before Content™ approach.
The Power of Connection First
Generally, education is content-focused, for good reason. There are important things we must learn. However, students are also facing heavy loads, such as divorce, death of a family member, long-term deployments, emotional crisis at home, bullying, ADHD, or learning disabilities. Some are stressed over smaller things like going to the Prom or taking their driving test. Often they’ve been labeled, misunderstood, and overlooked to serve the greater good of the classroom pace.
When students experience genuine connection, they create more bandwidth for their school work and get more done. Improvements come quickly. Getting better grades is second to boosted confidence and self-esteem. Our one-on-one work allows for more connection than a traditional classroom can provide.
Bright Heart, Bright Future
Teresa struggled with math as a young student. She was sure that understanding math was for everyone but her. It wasn’t until college that she connected with a tutor who helped her work out the problems and build her math skills. With support she discovered not only was she good at math, but she also enjoyed it and later was teaching it!
The personal connection and support helped her completely reframe those early self-defeating beliefs. Now Bright Heart Learning does that for all students.
