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Monday, July 07, 2008 | ||||||||
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Our Story Hi, I am Sarah Littlefield, the owner and founder of Townsend Learning Center. Perched literally over the falls in the charming town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, my mother and I started Townsend Learning Center in 1969. My mother, Rose Jane Townsend, was, quite frankly, burned out teaching suburban high school students, and wanted to start her own tutoring business. I had some entrepreneurial thoughts of my own, and wanted to try something different from teaching in a suburban junior high school. We were passionate about teaching reading, and decided to turn our cause into a business. Within months we had forty students and eight part-time tutors. Before long we added diagnostic testing, math, writing, and study skills to their repertoire. We became known as experts in alternative learning in the community, and gave talks and in-service workshops to parents, teachers, and professionals. Unfortunately, this familial bliss was not to last forever. Rose Jane died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm. I was devastated, but resolved to carry on the mission. I learned all aspects of the work—teaching, public speaking, marketing, managing. We added a west side branch. We designed a course to help high school students raise their SAT scores, and brought it to over 30 schools in northeast Ohio. As we rolled out each new service, each new location, I felt my mother’s presence, as if she were looking over my shoulder and cheering me on. To this day, Townsend instructors feel Rose Jane’s presence hovering. As I got older, my interests got older too. Adult learning became a main focus. Working closely with the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation, we started helping adults with disabilities improve their reading, writing, and math skills. Under the one-on-one guidance of Townsend’s instructors, adults who had long histories of problems in school were finding success, getting good grades?, and enjoying learning. Many were able to move into better jobs, or do better in the jobs they already had. Helping adults become better employees led to The Corporate Classroom, Townsend’s first venture into the world of business. We brought our teaching and training expertise into the workplace, and taught business reading, writing, and math to employees using real work samples and examples. Pre and post testing showed significant gains, and employees actually raised their productivity. In the next ten years, we brought our courses to over forty companies, as large as one thousand employees, and as small as ten. We taught basic shop math to the factory workers and high level business math to the executives. Often an employee and her boss were sitting side by side in the same classroom! The Veterans Administration contacted us in 1994 to test veterans who were suspected of having learning disabilities. After assessing a few veterans, we were asked to design a test battery for all veterans entering the Chapter 31 Vocational Rehabilitation service in order to determine their academic skill levels. The VA liked the way we encouraged the veterans we worked with, so they asked us to make recommendations to improve the remedial classroom they had in place. When we visited the class the sight of big hefty veterans sitting in rows of small desks, sweating over workbooks was a shock. When the teacher warned them to be quiet and get to work we knew we had to stand up for the guys who stood up for us! We decided that instead of consulting with the VA on how to improve the program, we would take the bull by the horns, and offer to run the program. It was challenging and thrilling to get what we wished for. We created an advisory board of veterans and they created the right learning environment for themselves. They even chose the colors of the artwork for the walls! We threw out the schoolroom desks and brought in office furniture. We bought state-of-the-art computers and software. We created cooperative learning groups, peer tutoring, and inquiry learning. Soft jazz music soothed nerves in the background. The design and arrangement of the classroom invited the veterans to dig in, read, write, study, and enjoy learning! These were the men and women who risked their lives for our freedom. We made sure then as we do now that every square inch at Townsend from the desks to the books from the teachers to the paint on the walls shows our vets the respect they deserve. Today they call our place Club Vet. Soon we were working with all kinds of adults with all kinds of issues. The Bureau of Workers Compensation sent us injured workers who needed to learn new skills to become 21st century information workers. Visually impaired people came to learn Jaws and other adaptive software so that they could succeed in an office. People often ask me why Townsend evolved from one-on-one tutoring to adult learning and vocational rehabilitation. I like to think of it this way: instead of tutoring only suburban kids to be even more advantaged, we are helping people of all ages and income levels make tangible gains in their lives. |
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