Math as Rescue Mission

How one teacher turned a piano studio into a math sanctuary, where slow and steady instruction restores confidence, clears confusion, and changes futures.

On a cold, windy night that she still remembers in small, clear details, Patricia Gordon closed her piano studio for the evening and found herself standing at a whiteboard, sketching a simple fraction for a student who could not see the pattern. She drew three quarters, pointed, and asked: What is the operation here? The student hesitated, then guessed. Patricia laughed, corrected gently, and invented a story on the spot about being on top of a tall building, freezing, and stepping inside to warm up. The student laughed back, the lightbulb went on, and a method stuck. That moment is the kind of thing parents send her long, grateful emails about; it is the reason one former student called years later to say, You changed my life.

Patricia runs Mathease Tutoring, a modest, intensely focused tutoring practice that refuses to be a quick fix and instead insists on teaching. She will help a student cram for a test when needed, but her real work is deliberate, slow, and stubborn. Mathease Tutoring does not hand out band-aid solutions. Patricia teaches students how to think in mathematical language, and she will not move on until understanding is real.

From Keys to Counting, From Song to Sum

Patricia began as a piano teacher. The practice of teaching technique before speed, tone before noise, shaped the way she thinks about instruction. One memory has become almost a parable for her approach. She was working with a five-year-old who kept playing the wrong note. Patricia realized that repeating the correction did not help. Instead, she asked different questions. What was the interval? What came before? She worked until the boy could name the note and feel its place in a sequence. The pupil’s face lit up. That is the sweet spot, she says, the place where a student moves from imitation to comprehension.

That shift from piano to math was practical as well as philosophical. By 2008, families were cutting back on piano lessons, and Patricia found herself fielding requests to help children with math. Her first tutoring job was a favor. The next was another favor. Then demand multiplied. Before long, she had a 1800 square foot office and a roster of up to 17 tutors. She ran the business, then broke from it to teach. She learned, as many good teachers learn, that understanding builds on understanding. If a child misses a foundational piece, future topics will feel like a foreign language.

Patricia’s voice in this interview is plain, unsentimental, and wry. She will tell you, Math today is being taught like history: learn it, test it, forget it. I am old-fashioned, and I teach, and my kids are doing amazing this school year. She is careful not to romanticize her path. Running a small educational business has required compromises. She closed her office after the pandemic, partly because rents climbed and partly because the demand she now meets requires one student at a time. Yet she retains the same purpose she had on that windy night with the fraction on the board. She wants to change kids’ lives.

Built on a Relentless Sense of Responsibility

Patricia’s defining conviction is that the teacher is responsible for learning. She recounts a classroom moment she often reprises with students, when frustration mounts and she asks: Whose fault is it that you do not get it? Most kids will admit, mine. Patricia refuses to accept that. No, she says. It is the teacher’s responsibility to make the material make sense. If you are not getting it, I have to try harder. That line is not showmanship. It is an operational principle that shapes every hour she spends with a student.

She follows the Socratic method, which in her practice is a chain of questions designed to coax thought rather than deposit solutions. She prefers to teach rather than tutor because teaching implies building mental tools, not merely demonstrating procedures. As she puts it, the difference between Mathease Tutoring and all the other franchises and tutors is that we do not tutor, we teach. That sentence often appears early in conversations with her parents.

The pandemic changed education in ways she found deeply unsettling. Patricia describes a patchwork of curricula and inconsistent standards. She points to grade inflation, the overreliance on calculators, and what she sees as a troubling trend toward testing without mastery. These are not abstractions for her. She talks about a third-grade student who still needed second-grade work, and about assignments that confuse children with language they do not yet understand. It is not only technique that matters, she says, it is vocabulary and comprehension. A child who does not know the words in a word problem will not solve it.

There are moments of raw, stubborn compassion in her story. Years ago, she promised a father that if his son did not pass the proficiency exam, she would teach him for free until he did, as long as he showed up and put in the work. The boy failed once, then again. Patricia kept teaching. The third test yielded a pass. The boy called to say, Miss Gordon, I passed. You changed my life. When she repeats that line in conversation, it is not with prideful boastfulness; it is simple evidence that a certain form of persistent attention can change outcomes.

Materials, Methods, and Small Good Tricks

Part of what sets Mathease Tutoring apart is not only its philosophy but its toolbox. Patricia has accumulated thousands of materials, sorted by subject, by quarter, by typical school pacing. Algebra one sits in a file with quarter one through quarter four. She keeps reviews, practice exams, and examples that mirror what schools actually do. When a student arrives with a worksheet about factoring polynomials, she can pull from a breadth of practice that matches that exact content. That kind of preparation shortens the route from confusion to competence.

She also builds tiny, memorable hooks. One technique for fractions involves imagining being on top of a building and stepping inside to warm up when you are cold. For long division, she insists on four steps: divide, multiply, subtract, bring down, repeat. She puts these steps on three-by-five cards and makes kids practice until the steps become second nature. Her approach is practical and occasionally mischievous, because humor helps memory. Math ease, she jokes, is not necessarily easy, but it can be made easier.

Patricia’s standards for hiring were historically rigorous. She explains that she used to require potential tutors to score at least 90 percent on her assessments to receive an interview. She tells a story of a candidate who failed her assessment but was hired elsewhere after scoring 72 percent. That anecdote is not meant to slam competitors; rather, it illustrates her seriousness about the craft of teaching. She prefers slow, thoughtful progress over scale. When she closed the larger office, it was partly because she values boutique, private work and partly because she finds it harder to recruit people who will accept the responsibility she insists on.

Voice in Her Own Words

Patricia’s language is direct and often funny. She does not soften her critique of modern education systems, a critique grounded in long experience. Here are some of her words, unvarnished, as she offered them during the interview.

The difference between Mathease Tutoring and all the other franchises and tutors is that we do not tutor; we teach.

If you are not getting it, I have to try harder.

You changed my life.

Those lines reveal different sides of her: a standards-first educator, a relentless problem solver, and a teacher who measures success in the moments when someone finally understands.

Why Parents Bring Their Children Back

Patricia’s reputation is obviously local and deep. She is on the Clark County School District list, she has returning families, and many new clients find her through Google and referrals. But the real reason families keep coming back is not listings or search engine results; it is outcomes. When parents bring children who have lost confidence, when an autistic student makes persistent progress, when a teenager who has been failing exits the room with a resume of competence, those are the stories that spread.

Her practice does not promise miracles overnight. She is candid about that. It is slow and steady, she says. She will help students with drop-in test prep, but if a child needs to be taught entire lessons from scratch, that takes time and attention. Parents who want real change hire her because she will not let an explanation suffice until comprehension is present. The result is often restored self-esteem. Boys who would say, Math is stupid, learn instead to reason and solve; girls who might internalize failure learn that they are not stupid.

The community benefits from more than math proficiency. Patricia’s students gain a sense of agency, an ability to tackle problems, and a confidence that extends into school and beyond. For a parent watching a child reclaim their sense of possibility, a tutoring session can feel like a small rescue.

Looking Forward Without Selling Out

When asked where she wants Mathease Tutoring to be in six to twelve months, Patricia is refreshingly realistic. She moved the business out of a large office and back into her home. She wants to keep it boutique and private. At one point, before the pandemic, the business approached half a million in revenue, and she thought about selling. Those plans have shifted. She wants to focus on students. She also mentions a desire to advocate for better math education in her state. I am in the trenches, she says. The people making policy do not see day to day what is happening in classrooms. If she had the chance to change the curriculum for the better, she would take it.

Her ambition is not necessarily growth for growth’s sake. It is an impact. She wants to keep doing the deep work, to continue teaching students who need patient, skilled instructors. She admits she is not good at the managerial side of business; she confesses she might have benefited from a partner who could run operations while she taught. Yet she knows what matters most: the work itself.

A Practical Invitation

If you want to see what this kind of instruction looks like, Patricia recommends starting with her assessments. She uses them as both a diagnostic and a promise. The assessment lets her know the exact places to start, and it signals to parents that she knows what she is doing. Mathease Tutoring's students often return for years, and some arrive with friends or siblings. That cumulative effect matters.

For readers who want to learn more, visit Mathease Tutoring at matheasetutoring.com, and search for Mathease Tutoring on Facebook and @matheasetutoring on Instagram to see updates and testimonials. The practice operates privately now in Patricia’s home. Appointments are limited because she prefers depth to scale. If you are a parent who wants your child to learn how to think through math, not just how to guess an answer on a test, Patricia is the kind of teacher you entrust with that work.

Beyond the Equation

There is a now familiar romance to stories about small businesses, about grit and pivot and reinvention. Patricia’s story is that, but it is also simpler and perhaps more necessary. She does not promise a shiny, rapid transformation. She promises a painstaking, patient process built on the conviction that teaching is the art of making the complex human understandable. She keeps three-by-five cards on long division for kids who will need them later in life, and she will invent a building-top metaphor in fifteen seconds to help a child remember an idea. She will say hard things about curricula and testing and then turn around and do the small, heroic work of helping one student at a time.

If you care about the future of education in your community, or if you have a child who needs a teacher to fight for their understanding, consider Mathease Tutoring. Patricia will not sell you a brand. She will teach a student to think.

This feature is part of The Business View Journal’s Local Spotlight Series — your trusted source for discovering the best small businesses in your community.