I originally ended up starting Empowered Avenue for my own daughter to make some friends and do some classes while home schooling.
A bit about me and my background: I am a qualified and registered Primary School Teacher with a background in Science and Humanities as well as a passion for Highland Dancing. After taking 5 years off dancing, I’ve come back with just as much interest and fire I had when I stopped to have a family. I love to teach a range of things because it keeps it interesting. I also teach swimming on the weekend and supervise at a vacation care on the holidays! I just completed my Teacher of Infants and Pre-schoolers swimming teacher add on qualification which has allowed me to teach under 3’s which I love. So many hats to wear when you are a mother of 2 under 4. My latest addition to 2019 will be adding a Pool Lifeguard Qualification. Who knows what else!
After initially starting for my child, it morphed into filling a gap in the home school community and it became so much more than that. I originally started to cater to the pre-school age of 3-5 who often miss out on home schooling activities but are too old for playgroups and such. Then I went on to specialise in small group science classes for children from K-8 and making them accessible to all regardless of background or ability. I make the class suit the children enrolled not the other way round. This expanded again to offering more classes in other subjects, incursions to large scale groups and tutoring. Then in mid 2018 we launched our highland dance tutoring to align with the science classes, bringing everything under one roof.
At the beginning of 2019 we are set to do classes with children from K-10 now! New classes being added to further expand the subject areas to literacy and numeracy and officially starting the small group after school tutoring. Incursions are set to go and our highland dance classes are hopefully going to expand into the pre-school years both during and after school times.
2019 will see the beginning of big changes for us with my eldest starting at Montessori School which will hopefully leave me me a bit more free to pursue some professional development and experience in the form of relief teaching and expanding my business. She is ready for a bit more social development than I can provide her and the Montessori environment provides the perfect individual academic plan which she would lose if going mainstream.
I love to see the children’s faces light up in my classes when they do a cool hands on experiment or craft activity and I love that I have the space and ability to do all this from my home. For a business which grew from nothing at the start of this year, I’m so happy to be where we are now and can’t wait to meet more families.