Meet the teacher: Alex Sarychkin on why every child deserves a great teacher
As a child, MyEdSpace English teacher Alex Sarychkin attended a school deemed in the bottom 10 of all 3,000+ secondary schools in the UK. It was a school which had seen tragedy at its gates and a culture of surviving, rather than thriving, had taken hold.
But, new teachers and fresh ideas came in, and suddenly things started to change.
“My school was a really good example of how you take a failing school and rejuvenate it. We got the first or second cohort of ‘Teach First’ teachers and it completely changed the school. The new teachers that came in seemed so interesting to us teenagers. One of them was in a band and another one lived with Charlie Simpson from Busted. There was a huge vibe change,” he remembers.
“My parents had always stressed the importance of education to me. My mum was a lawyer, before she moved into care and advocacy for vulnerable people, while my dad grew up in Russia and moved to the UK in the late 1980s as an interpreter and then moved into IT, so the value of education was something I was always taught. But, it wasn’t until I was 14 or 15 that I realised that it’s actually cool to be clever and it’s cool to be engaged with art, culture and reading. It was then that I think I really grasped that it was powerful to be educated, and I started to ask myself how can I make a difference? I started thinking about teaching.”
Upon leaving school, Alex earned a BA in English Literature from Queen Mary, University of London. Upon leaving university Alex, like many graduates, wasn’t 100% sure what to do next, so took a job in a charity call centre while he figured out his next steps. One day, his phone rang and it was an old tutor asking if he fancied tutoring GCSE English and Maths students at his old school. Intrigued, he gave it a go, leading to an offer to stay on and do his teacher training.
“Going back to my old school was a big positive because I knew the struggles the school had endured and I had seen first hand the effect of a new wave of highly motivated teachers, so I was very driven to play my part. I enjoyed working with those kids. I could see parallels. I knew the areas that they were from. I knew the kind of things they were up against, and so I could connect with them quite quickly.”
After a couple of years, having played his part in helping turn the school around, Alex realised that while he was a good teacher, the best way to become a great teacher would be to move on and experience other schools.
“I was happy and comfortable, but being comfortable isn't always conducive to progress, and so leaving was the best thing that I did. Going to another school - that's when I really kicked on as a teacher,” he explains.
Alex would spend almost another decade in the classroom, while also working for seven years as an examiner, before joining MyEdSpace. His decision motivated by a burning desire to help as many schoolchildren as possible experience that same transformative effect that great teachers can have on children.
“The main thing that drew me to MyEdSpace was the idea of reach. I could be reaching tens of thousands of students in the next few years. When I was teaching in schools, I probably had five classes every year with around 30 kids per class, that adds up to about 2,000 students. At MyEdSpace, I’ve already taught that this year alone.”
For Alex, the time has come to drag education into the modern world. “UK classrooms are stuck in the past and slow to change. Very rarely do they reflect the reality of what is going on outside, so it's no wonder that the classroom environment can be quite confusing for young people.”
“There are kids that want to sit down and learn in the comfort of their own home, and that is what works for them. Of course, there’s a lot of debate around screen time and it is something we need to work on, but social media is such a powerful tool and we’re providing important, robust, educational content. We go through the whole curriculum. If you were home educated and we were your only teachers, you would cover everything.”
“MyEdSpace is high stakes and low pressure. You’re learning from experts and we’re all in it together, which brings a real sense of collective. The students I teach have also built a community amongst themselves. You can see them saying they are going to succeed and that they are helping each other and competing with each other. We want you to do well and we teach you without dumbing it down, so if you were really struggling and you came to us, you’d really thrive.”
“If you can afford to pay for 1-2-1 private tuition for your kids for different subjects and are able to squeeze that into your budget, that’s great for your kids. But not many people, particularly the working classes in this country, can afford that. We want to provide that for every single kid in the country. Our courses start at £5 an hour for a reason: because we want to get rid of that disparity.”
“We want every single kid to have the opportunity to learn from the very best teachers in the country, and to close the gap between the private tutors and the families that can afford that and bring it to as many kids as we can.”
Get ahead and stay ahead this year
Whether your child is getting started with Year 5, preparing for the 11+, heading towards their KS2 SATs in Year 6, or moving through KS3 in Year 7, Year 8, and Year 9, starting their GCSEs or their A-levels, now is the time to get ahead.
The secret to achieving academic success in the UK? Studying with top-quality teachers and former examiners, handpicked for their ability to make things click for their students and working hard. Do that and results follow. This year, it's your child's turn to get ahead and stay ahead.
And, it’s more affordable than you might think. With us, you can get a full year of expert teaching for less than a few classes with the average private tutor.
Check out our course catalogue to begin.
