Job Description

Mathnasium Assistant Center Director

At my first job, I worked as a Mathnasium Learning Instructor––which is a fancy title for a tutor. Mathnasium is exactly what it sounds like: a place for students to go to strengthen their math skills. On one occasion, I recall explaining the origin of “Mathnasium” to a fifth grader; I told her it was like a gymnasium for math. I spent the following ten minutes trying to explain what a gymnasium was, succeeding only in giving that fifth grader a serious case of the giggles.

After one year as an instructor, my bosses promoted me to an assistant center director. There were three assistant directors who all worked under the director to lead our team of about 15 other employees. It was a big moment for me because I had been politely begging for them to promote me for months. When my bosses did finally promote me, I skipped a position in the center hierarchy. The other assistant directors were grown-men with college degrees. Why did they want me alongside them?

The three main roles I took on as an assistant director were:

• Salesman

• Peacekeeper

• Kid Sister

I have many fond memories of my two years there, but I’ll use a few specific examples to illustrate how I took on those roles.

Salesman

Assistant directors and salesmen share the following responsibilities that I performed:

• Generating leads for potential new customers

• Educating prospective customers about what we’re selling

• Convincing customers that our business is the best place to buy it from

A typical appointment with a parent who was considering Mathnasium would go something like this. The parent would call our center saying their child is struggling to keep up in their math classes and they need some extra help. I would ask questions about the student’s grade level and what seems to be hard for them about math. Then the parent would come in for a consultation that I tailored to appeal to their specific needs. For example, once a mom came in with her son who was having trouble learning multiplication. After some probing and practice questions with her son, I realized his addition skills weren’t strong enough. After all, multiplication builds on an understanding of addition. When I sat down with the mom to sell her a Mathnasium program for her son, I did three things. I explained the issue to her, our plan to fix it, and the difference between our solution and our competitors'. Most of the time, the parent would then sign up their child. The parent was happy to have the problem in capable hands, and I was happy to have a new student.

Peacekeeper

Another role I took on was that of a peacekeeper. It was my job to mitigate most conflicts between students, employees, and parents. I did that by doing the following:

• Communicating with upset parents

• Enforcing behavior expectations for students while in the center

• Relaying messages between disgruntled employees and management

The Mathnasium I worked at was in a very wealthy area. That meant many of the parents felt very entitled and often blamed others for their problems. For example, once a parent called the center to accuse us of losing her child. In reality, there was a miscommunication that led one parent to believe the student was at the center when she was really at dance class. In that scenario it was my job to make sure the child hadn’t come in that day and left unattended and assure her we would never let anything like that happen. Before we resolved the matter, the parent called the police; needless to say, it was not my favorite day at work. I also had to be the enforcer of good behavior. As anyone who’s ever dealt with spoiled children knows, it is anything but a walk in the park to tell kids “No” who’ve never heard the word before. Sometimes I felt like an overworked carrier pigeon going back and forth between instructors upset about reduced hours and my bosses who were trying not to go over payroll for the fifth month in a row.

Kid Sister

My favorite role I unintentionally stepped into as part of my job was the kid sister of the center staff. Besides my bosses writing that on my goodbye card when I left, the other ways I felt like that were:

• Receiving constant jokes

• Feeling like the most protected member of a family

• Growing under the guidance of my two bosses over my two years there

I know that this sounds untraditional and strange but working at Mathnasium truly was like being part of a family. Every day when I came in, I knew I was in for a fun shift no matter how hectic or boring the day would be. My bosses used to make lovingly sarcastic comments about how bad I was with kids––all the students asked to sit in my section when I was an instructor. On my first day of training one of them threw candy at me when I apparently looked tired. And they always invited me out to dinner at the end of a long week and refused to let me pay for my own food. When I committed to USC my bosses were some of the first people I told. They made sure everyone at the corporate training that day knew it; they went around bragging about me like proud dads. During my last performance evaluation before I left for college, the boss that hired me was nearly in tears. He told me how proud of me he was and how much of a joy it was to watch me succeed and grow in my time there. I miss my Mathnasium family very often. I’ll always look back fondly on the uniquely transformative and supportive environment I had there.

Readability Statistics

• Words per Sentence: 17.9
• Characters per Word: 4.3
• Flesch Reading Ease: 68.4
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 7.9
• Passive Sentences: 0%