Christina Thomas just wasn’t happy seeing the setbacks students were experiencing in their education after schools were forced shut by the novel coronavirus pandemic last year. She decided, therefore, to help correct the deficit by starting a tutoring service in May 2020.

But, due to a high demand for accommodation of students, Thomas quickly transitioned her business into a private school called The Young Innovator’s Academy in July 2020 to facilitate virtual classes.

Now, Thomas has a physical space for her school in Kingston, which has been open since last Wednesday.

“Initially, I started out with a child [tutoring] and I remember being there with the child one day and the mother was making some suggestions [about classes] which I was open to, but I did not have any more kids to teach,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

“After a while things quickly took off because I would go to the homes of the children in Portmore and Kingston. Then, I started doing the school online where I had small groups of students and I had to hire teachers. Then someone had asked me ‘Why not register your business as a school?’ I figured that if there was a way for me to not only benefit as an entrepreneur, but to really help kids in this time would be an awesome opportunity,” Thomas added.

The St Catherine resident explained that she has a background in law, but had always been interested in exploring the career path of teaching.

“While attending Ardenne High School a few years ago, I was required to do community service. At the age of 14 when I was in the ninth grade, I would work with other students from grade seven to grade 11 by doing English classes with them. It was then that I really developed a passion for teaching. I also worked at many private schools, which gave me the insight into how the system really works,” she said.

Thomas admitted that she was a bit doubtful about making the change from tutoring to running a private institution.

“The Government gives some support but not as much as if you were operating a public school. It’s also not easy finding teachers who are willing to jump ship from public to private schools, mainly because of the benefits, and also since it’s a start-up, so it is risky as with any other enterprise, but the reward is pretty great so I can just stick it out,” she said.

Thomas said she has seven teachers and a cohort of 50 students — 35 local and 15 international — from ages four to 18 at her school.

The local students are from all parishes across the island, while the international students are from Maryland and New York in the United States.

Face-to-face and online classes are held from 8:30 am to 2:30 pm Mondays to Fridays. Additionally, homework club and remedial sessions are held after regular classes.

Pointing to the curricula, Thomas said, “All subjects are offered to the students. We follow the National Standards Curriculum and for those living abroad we had to integrate the K-12 syllabus and SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) syllabus.”

Teaching small groups, she said, has great value, as students are given more individual attention.

“In the physical space I can have up to seven children and online I would have five students or below that amount. For example, I would have three grade four classes with five students, some of them may even have two students. With five students in a class, the teacher is able to manage them properly and pull aside one or two if they are disruptive or falling behind. In a physical classroom with 20 kids to one teacher, that’s a lot,” she said.

So far, Thomas said, her students have been performing well.

“For the recent PEP (Primary Exit Profile) exam, I was extremely pleased to see a lot of students pass for schools like Campion, Immaculate, Ardenne and Meadowbrook High. That was phenomenal for me because a lot of the students I got were already in one year of the novel coronavirus pandemic so their regression rate was extremely high. But to have them and work with them, seeing the progress through their examination was really good,” she told the Sunday Observer.

Now, Thomas is hoping to open other locations across the island and join forces with public schools to strengthen education for students.

“I want to accommodate more students and I want to partner with my teachers and some public schools, starting with my alma maters — Ardenne High School and Jessie Ripoll Primary — and other schools with limited resources so my teachers can train some of these public school teachers about how to get the best out of remote learning because at the rate at which we we are going right now, we will be doing virtual classes for a while,” Thomas said.