As the owner of Mathnasium of Pike Creek, I am proud to say I spent about seven months as an apprentice at Mathnasium of Rosemont in suburban Philly. It is the oldest and largest Mathnasium in the Philly area and has a phenomenal reputation in the community and the Mathnasium system. I worked alongside a beloved center director, experienced instructors, and Greg, the engaged and caring owner.
In my time there, I learned by doing. I worked as an instructor, interacting directly with students of all ages and varying appetites for math. I worked as an assistant director managing curriculums and assessing students. I even spent a few months as the interim center director, dealing directly with parents of existing and future students.
I’m incredibly grateful for this experience because I believe it has set up the children of New Castle County--our soon-to-be students--for success. Here are five key learnings I will take with me as Mathnasium becomes a member of the Pike Creek community:
1. Education Comes First...The Rest Will Take Care of Itself
One thing that I appreciate about Mathnasium of Rosemont is the subtle yet apparent focus on tailored education. Don’t get me wrong—the Mathnasium curriculum as a standalone is extremely effective. Nevertheless, students have local needs that are not always addressable by a standardized education. Specifically, they have homework assignments, tests, exams, and unique challenges across the various school curricula. The Mathnasium of Rosemont team truly understands that no child is the same and, while the bulk of the education relies solely on the already-personalized Mathnasium curriculum of each student, a little extra focus beyond the curriculum makes a huge difference in making sure the experience is as beneficial as possible.
On a more philosophical level, education is everything here. Greg leads all decision-making from the standpoint of the child’s math needs. That means making decisions that aren’t always favorable to a business plan, but when the value is education, the business thrives because the kids are getting what they truly need. Focusing on education above all else is one of the fundamental reasons this Mathnasium has thrived in the last twenty years and has such an incredible reputation in the community.
2. Relationships with Parents and Students Are at the Forefront
I knew this business was a relationship business when I decided to open a Mathnasium, but I didn’t comprehend the extent to which that pervaded every aspect of the business. Parents are entrusting us with not only their child but their child’s future—that is a big deal. As such, we maintain personal relationships with the parents and students here. Every single one of them matters. What they want and need is important. Their struggles are acknowledged and their worries are addressed. We know them by name and they know us by name. There are holiday cards hung on the walls here from the families and photos of high school seniors in their college hoodies with their favorite instructors.
In a world full of faceless and transactional businesses, Mathnasium of Rosemont is old school in the best way possible. It is much more than a place for practicing math.
3. Happy Employees Make Successful Students
It is no secret that small businesses’ greatest challenge is often related to finding, hiring, training, and retaining the right employees. Mathnasium is no different. Yet Greg has done just that. He has three instructors who work every day and have done so for over a decade. He has another couple of on-call instructors who have been there for just as long. The rest of the staff is supplemented by college students and a couple of former Mathnasium students who are close to graduating high school. Better yet, his staff is a well-oiled machine, autonomous and empowered to make decisions.
I asked Greg how he does it and he has no secret formula, but he does say that it’s important to understand the needs of your employees and meet those needs. A lot of small business owners assume this means paying your people more, but that isn’t always the case. Sure, there are always people whose primary driver is financial, but others are more motivated by autonomy, others by structure, others by flexibility in their schedules, others by the mission, and the majority by some combination of the above. Greg knows and cares for his staff personally. He knows why they want to be at Mathnasium and makes sure he satisfies that personal motivation. As a result, his employees love him and love working at Mathnasium.
You might wonder what this has to do with your child. After all, the inner workings of a business’s hiring and employment practices might seem irrelevant to the education of a student but, in reality, the two are tightly bound. Employees who walk through the doors each day feeling happy, respected, and empowered pass that same energy and care onto the students they instruct. If the employees feel undervalued, disrespected, or otherwise sour about their work, they might be able to put on a happy face but will be less engaged and will be tuning up their resume behind the scenes. As a result, less experienced instructors will more frequently need to take control of the instructional floor and a generally underwhelming vibe will permeate. That is not an environment that sets up your children to embrace math.
As a result of this experience, I’ve learned a ton about how to support the students of Mathnasium by focusing on the staff. Between this experience and my prior people management experience, I am hyper-focused on culture and confident that will equate to your child thriving at Mathnasium of Pike Creek.
4. Balance Is a Key Component of Student Success
My mom's grandmother lived by the mantra, “everything in moderation,” and that mindset has been passed down through the generations to me. I’ve found that it also applies to running a great Mathnasium. The best space for learning is a balanced space.
Balance comes in different forms. Firstly, we must balance the math-specific needs of the students. Those needs include:
These three things overlap but are different. For elementary students, the vast majority of time is spent on the long-term, because they need to have strong math skills to thrive in high school and to have opportunities and autonomy in life. I am adamant that math is the backbone of critical thinking for many if not most people, as I discuss in my article about why I decided to open a Mathnasium in the first place. There is no better time to build that cognitive foundation than when the brains are young and spongy. Plus, elementary school students are not yet in an environment that demands homework help and test prep. The older high school students are the opposite—their needs are more geared toward the short-term. We have to be pragmatic about the urgency of tests and grades while still addressing any gaps. Middle schoolers and early high school students are somewhere in the middle. A student spends 60-90 minutes in the center two or three times a week. It is our job to understand what balance is needed for them to meet their short and long-term math needs.
The next component of balance is about the environment itself. We don’t believe in the traditional education model that operates in a rigid, sterile, “do as I say because I said so” environment. This is not school, and as such, it is extra in the minds of the students! They might need to be here but they don’t have to be here. For this reason alone, we need to balance the work with the fun. If it is all work, they don’t want to come back and long-term results suffer. If it is all fun, they don’t learn enough. Our goal is not to jam as much math into the hour as possible, but to focus on quality. If a student improves one skill in an hour and walks out smiling, that is far better than improving two skills and seeing them sulk as they walk out the door. At Mathnasium, we make this happen by incentivizing learning with prizes, similar to an arcade. We also have a variety of types of work to do, from the core math content to supplemental gamified and practical math, to problem of the week, to math games and puzzles. When a student is burned out, we meet them where they are and make sure they are engaged but still enjoying their hour and change. In staying with the theme of a gym, if your legs are sore when you walk in, you shouldn’t try to max out your squat, but should still train your legs to the extent that they are capable that day. We do the same with children's minds at Mathnasium and we do it by caring about how the student is feeling and reading their body language. Their education is a collaboration, not a mandate, and as such they do better in the long run and embrace not only math proficiency but a positive attitude toward math when there is a balance between work and fun.
5. Transparency Is The Basis of Trust and Respect
Have you ever felt like a company is guarding information from you? Of course you have. We all have. It is the worst. It personally drives me nuts. Nevertheless, I was surprised when I realized just how transparent Mathnasium of Rosemont truly is. Having worked in B2B software sales in the past, I always was direct and open with customers but didn’t necessarily reveal everything. This approach was largely done as a means of keeping us focused on the important information and not getting distracted by unimportant content. I was expecting the same approach here but was pleasantly surprised to learn that the best way to run a Mathnasium is to be completely forthcoming and open. I quickly realized that in such a personal and relationship-focused business as this one, transparency is equivalent to respecting your customers and the service you provide them—the greater the transparency, the greater the respect. As a result, Rosemont is an open book and Pike Creek will be when we open as well.
What does that mean specifically? We share our pricing. We talk to parents about what we think their students need before and after they enroll. We turn customers away when they aren’t a good fit. We tell students when they are doing a good job or when they need to change their approach. We tell schools what we do and invite educators to come see for themselves. We contact parents when the students aren’t coming in as much. We invite the community to see for themselves who we are and what we do, with open arms.
Mathnasium is the best supplemental math education service in the world. We have nothing to hide.
As a result of this mindset and approach, we build trust with the community and our families. We lose would-be customers in the short term by not employing some classic sales tactics, but that is okay. We want the right customers who will see us as a valued part of their children’s education. This approach pays off in the long run, as evidenced by the fact that Mathnasium of Rosemont enrolls the most students of any center in the Greater Philadelphia area. Mathnasium of Pike Creek will take this same long-term community partner approach.
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My time at Mathnasium of Rosemont has helped me learn an immense amount about how to run a great Mathnasium. We are excited to open our doors at Mathnasium of Pike Creek this May and promise to always stick to what was shared in this article—that student success will be the driving force behind our decisions, that our relationships with the families will be respected and nurtured, that keeping our employees happy will be a focal point of keeping the environment positive, that we will prioritize balance for the sake of long-term student success, and that we will be completely transparent with our students, staff, parents, and community.
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