How Working at Art of Smart Helped Claire Land Her Dream Job as a Teacher

Often tutoring is seen as a casual gig you do while at university until you start looking for ‘serious’ degree related work!

But this isn’t actually the case!

Working at AOS is an incredible opportunity to build key skills and experiences so that you can land that graduate job!

Really? Yes, really!

Find out how Claire landed her dream job as a secondary science teacher!

What role will you be doing next year? What excites you about this?

I will be working as a secondary science teacher at a high school in Western Sydney next year. I’m really excited because I love interacting with keen students and inspiring not-so-keen students.

It’s a great opportunity to help young adults become independent learners and to work towards their futures. I’m also happy because being a science teacher means I can keep learning about interesting science as part of my job!

What prompted you initially to apply to join the AOS team?

I initially wanted to be a tutor because I enjoy sharing what I know with others. I became an Art of Smart coach because I liked the ethos of supporting students in both academic and non-academic areas and the one-to-one context. It was an approach that was pretty different from that taken by other tutoring companies at the time.

What skills have you learned and developed in your time at AOS?

During my time with Art of Smart, I have learned a lot about how to differentiate teaching for different students, which is a very useful skill for a future teacher. I have also developed skills in resource design, goal setting, time management and organisation. However, the most important skills I’ve developed as an coach are definitely those to do with communication.

A lot of these skills were developed through the experience of teaching – in order to support students in the best way possible, I really needed to develop a good rapport with students and their parents. I developed my communication and interpersonal skills by regularly talking to students and parents in person, by email and over the phone.

As part of coaching students, I also did a lot of goal setting with them, helping them to work out what they wanted to achieve and how they could get there. Working with a range of students gave me a better insight into how best to cater to students with different abilities and interests, and gave me an opportunity to design some resources for use in lessons. I also had some opportunities to design resources for Art of Smart beyond those I made for my own students. I developed better time management and organisational skills because I had to balance preparing resources and conducting lessons with my university studies – especially around exam time!

How did AOS support you in developing these skills?

Art of Smart provided a lot of support right from the start, with an induction that gave guidance on how to communicate with parents and prepare lessons, by providing resources that could be used in different subjects or to help students in setting goals, and by having an ‘open door’ policy that encouraged coaches to contact senior coaches or administrative staff with any questions.

Since I started at Art of Smart, I’ve also been to a few workshops/development days focused on particular skills, been part of the senior leadership team and been given opportunities to do things like resource design. All of these have helped me to develop useful skills that I’ll take with me to my future roles.

What’s been your favourite/most rewarding experience while part of the AOS team?

My favourite experience has been seeing students that I’ve worked with all year succeed and achieve their goals. It’s really rewarding to see students putting in effort throughout the year and realising that they can achieve goals that they thought were beyond them.

How do you feel your work at AOS contributed to you successfully becoming a teacher?

Working at Art of Smart helped me to become a teacher by giving me experience in assessing students’ learning and teaching content and skills to secondary students. As well as this, it has helped me develop communication skills that are essential for teaching. My interactions with students and other keen coaches also motivated me to pursue a career in education once I had finished my undergraduate science degree.

How can other coaches make the best use of their time with AOS to develop their skills?

Other coaches should definitely attend workshops hosted by Art of Smart and if possible try to get involved in running them as well. The best way to develop your skills with Art of Smart is to contribute – get involved with designing resources and with new initiatives.

Take the time to engage with other coaches and with parents, since they often have a lot of good advice – not just about coaching! Finally, if you put in the effort with each and every student, you will definitely improve your time management, goal setting and communication skills.

Looking for a job to help you get into your dream career?

We’re looking for world-class tutors and mentors to join our team! 

We offer tutoring and mentoring for Years K-12 in a large variety of subjects, with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in students homes or at our state of the art campus in Hornsby!

To find out more and apply to become an Art of Smart coach get in touch today! 

Isabella Hanley loves science. She loves science so much she’s making it her career. While completing her Bachelor of Medical Science she is also a Coach and Digital Content Manager at Art of Smart. She is super passionate about sharing her knowledge on surviving the HSC since completing the HSC herself in 2014. In her downtime she enjoys Netflix binging like a pro, singing in the shower and baking cakes that are almost as tall as she is.