Jackson Free Press

Educational support professional Jillian Smart, CEO of Jackson Education Support, founded the business in 2012 with the goal of using her passion for teaching to help both children and adults develop as independent learners.

To that end, Jackson Education Services provides online and in-person services for educators, learners and their families, and presently boasts a 96% success rate among private tutoring and exam prep clients, its website says. Smart implements personalized services for each client to help them achieve their specific goals.

Smart's approach toward instructing centers around boosting engagement and helping students become interested in learning so that once she equips them with the skills they need to succeed in their studies, the students are able to further their academic careers on their own.

"Understanding intrinsic motivation is very important to me," Smart says. "In some places, educational support providers focus only on academics. Jackson Education Support leverages character development to affect cognitive development, which means that we teach to the whole child, dealing with the feeling part of learning as well as the thinking part."

Student services primarily consist of private tutoring and exam prep, particularly for the ACT. Specialty subject areas include literacy, math and science.

Proud of her students, Smart notes that one high-school junior preparing for the ACT has improved his scores in the reading and science sections by practicing speed-reading strategies and that he recently earned a 33 in math on his latest practice test, whereas he had previously been able to correctly answer only half of the questions when he first began.

For educators, Jackson Education Support offers Google for Education training, PRAXIS exam prep, academic intervention, custom engagement-focused class activities and more, and offers family engagement and instructional intervention coaching for parents, among other services.

Those interested in becoming a client may schedule an initial 90-minute session through the business' website to set up a profile, create a personalized learning plan and begin instruction.

Presently, Jackson Education Support has been tailoring its services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Moving forward, the goal is to observe social distancing and encourage clients to wear masks as we begin to support the new efforts of the local school districts by ... reinforcing the material that is taught in class and providing support for the parents who are interested in seeking that support for the children," Smart says.

Because distance learning incorporates technologies that parents or students may not fully understand, Jackson Education Support offers services that make sense of these tools and other elements of an online learning environment.

To help quell the spread of the coronavirus, Jackson Education Support's learning center (2637 Ridgewood Road) is currently only available for existing clients.

The business also features a blog page on its website, which contains a number of resources and tips for educators, students and parents.

New client enrollment is now open for fall programming.

For more information on Jackson Education Support and its services, call 601-724-2152 or visit je411.com.