Working at F&B is both challenging and rewarding. At every step, F&B’s educational leaders will push you to continue to improve your practice and develop the skills to become an effective educator. F&B has high standards for its employees but provides the necessary support to help every team member meet those expectations. Working with F&B students gave me a nuanced understanding of the complexities of education and the importance of considering the whole child- their learning profile, personality, and environmental circumstances- in order to be an effective educator. There is no separating executive functioning skills from academic capabilities or personal events from school performance. Educators need to customize their approach to work for each individual child student. Theoretically, we all may know this, but working with students within F&B’s model makes it crystal clear. One unique aspect of F&B is the intentional focus on relationship-building and trust development as levers for improving student outcomes. The leadership team understands that educators should spend time connecting with their students, demonstrating empathy, and caring genuinely about their whole lives in order for students to buy in to a process of change. Not only does this model yield positive experiences for the students, but it made my experience more meaningful as well. F&B gave me dear friends and excellent mentors, who not only pushed me to improve my teaching practices but encouraged and supported my evolving career goals. When I realized that I was passionate about systems-level education reform, I received thoughtful and supportive enthusiasm for my new goals; I’m now pursuing a Master’s in Education Policy and Management.

At F&B, I found a community of dedicated educators working together to improve their teaching. I tutored math while I was in college, and F&B helped grow my domain skills as I branched out into teaching physics and computer science, and improved my pedagogy. My work with the Educational Therapy team empowered me to systematically analyze my students' learning in terms of discrete cognitive skills in order to tailor my teaching to their needs. Beyond the curricular content, this enabled me to help students improve cross-cutting skills like their depth of processing, pattern recognition, and recall. My time at F&B helped prepare me for my future academic work; I am currently enrolled at Carnegie Mellon's Masters in Educational Technology and Applied Learning Science (METALS) program, where I am preparing to pivot to a more technical career path within the educational sphere. My practical teaching experience informs my interpretation learning science principles, and my design and development of teaching tools.

I enjoyed my time at F&B immensely. Everything about it was pleasant: my students were polite and respectful, my supervisors were supportive and insightful, my coworkers were friendly and easy to relate to, and the front desk insulated me from everything besides teaching and preparing to teach. Having previously tutored through Kaplan, I found F&B’s approach to test prep refreshing. F&B takes students’ differences in learning abilities seriously, and my supervisors had a deep well of strategies ready for different students. And having previously tutored math and science without institutional support, I found it very reassuring to be surrounded by coworkers who were familiar with the teachers and curricula at the local high schools. I’m now at law school, and I’ve found that preaching good problem solving and learning habits has made me a more lucid and disciplined student. I’m better at assessing my understanding, I cut fewer corners, and I have a much stronger understanding of what my teachers are trying to evaluate in their exams.

My time working at F&B was formative in my development as an educator and now medical student. Prior to joining the F&B team, I taught middle school science for two years. I knew I wanted to continue working in education while pursuing my ultimate career goal of attending medical school and becoming a physician. Working at F&B as a tutor couldn’t have been a better next step. The onboarding process was seamless and the entire team welcoming. I soon realized that a cornerstone of F&B’s success lies in its sense of community and partnership. One of my favorite aspects of my role was the opportunity to form close relationships with my students and their families. In doing so, I became more aware of my passion for working with others to set goals and devise strategies to achieve them. I appreciated the emphasis on the skills students were developing, rather than exclusively the knowledge they were acquiring. I valued the ability to collaborate with fellow tutors in weekly meetings, in which we would brainstorm how to optimize our work with students and engage in our own professional development as educators. Now as a medical student at the University of Michigan, I continue to apply the communication and interpersonal skills I developed as a tutor at F&B in my work with some of my first patients. I plan to pursue a career in academic medicine and value the unique perspective afforded by my prior experience working in education. Finally, I was impressed by the unique relationship F&B has built with its surrounding communities, all of which show a strong dedication to the success and well-being of their youth. Fairfield County, Connecticut is a great place for young professionals both in terms its affordability and range of activities available. A few of my personal favorites were trying one of the many fantastic restaurants in the area and exploring the nearby cities of New Haven and Stamford. As a tutor and medical school applicant, I appreciated the flexibility in being able to take time when needed to interview and visit schools. I encourage others interested in pursuing graduate education to consider working at F&B, as it can be a valuable experience with a lasting impact.

Working at F&B during the year I applied to medical school was truly the best thing I could have done with that time. My job was engaging, stimulating, and fun, and it is not infrequent that I wonder why I left (lots of snacks, dogs and yoga at work, and getting to work with cool, smart people? Amazing.) I discovered a love of teaching, and enjoyed being surrounded by talented, optimistic, forward-thinking educators. This is not just a “college prep” job, but an organization that truly cares about personal development of its clients and staff in a very youthful, social environment. Personally, spending time thinking about learning, time management, and organizational skills from the “tutor” perspective yielded enormous performance benefits as a medical student, plus I have gotten to continue tutoring as a result of my solid F&B background. I recently finished interviewing for residency, and this experience came up several times and was a great way to showcase ability to be a team player as well as leadership skills. I am very grateful for my experience working at F&B - not only was it a perfect “gap year” job, I learned a lot and developed valuable skills that I will use the rest of my life.