Shuyinthia Farley-Hembry
Noticing a void in the academic achievement of District students, Shuyinthia Farley-Hembry, created Butterfly Works LLC to solve the problem. The tutoring and college preparatory program was launched in 2006. She serves at the organization’s chief academic officer.
While the company began offering basic tutoring in subjects like reading, math, social studies, science, history and language arts, a2010 partnership with educational service Bell Curves enables the company to offer clients SAT, ACT, Secondary School Admission Test (SSAT), and Independent School Entrance Exam (ISEE) preparation services.
“I started with just one client, and that one client shared my name within her neighborhood and all of a sudden I had five clients. Then those clients shared my name with co-workers and I had 20 clients, so it happened exponentially,” Farley-Hembry told the AFRO on May 5.
In 2000, she began working as a private academic tutor. Between 2001 and 2010, she worked with three prominent tutoring and SAT prep companies throughout the D.C. metropolitan area. Farley-Hembry trained as a jazz violinist at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. As a child, she also developed a love for art through calligraphy. She then went on to study psychology and music at George Washington University.
“Shuy is an amazing educator, great person, and extremely committed to her craft,” S. Bethea, a client, said. “The differentiator for Shuy is the depth of knowledge she has in a broad spectrum of subjects, as well as her ability to teach students at all levels. I don’t meet many people are as creatively and intellectually balanced as Shuy or as genuinely interested in the development of young people.”
Integral to Farley-Hembry’s method of teaching is creating interactions that are both exciting and familiar for students. During sessions, students might tweet a new vocabulary word in a sentence to other participants or find a picture to post on Instagram related to a math term.
“Our goal is to have them use the technology that they already have we integrate the learning material into it so it becomes a lot easier and fun for them,” she says. “Clients say the time frame it takes them to increase their scores – whether it be in math, reading or even language arts and science – is quicker than most services.”
While students may come to her as caterpillars – crawling through lessons – they soon break out of their cocoons. “Once they understand that it’s not beyond them and they can actually understand through different techniques and positive thinking, they become more confident – that’s what I love,” she says. “That’s what keeps me doing it over and over.”