Johnique Duhaney passionate about helping
Published:Friday | March 29, 2019 | 12:00 AMVanessa James/Gleaner Writer
According to entertainment personality Will Smith, “If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better.”
Johnique Duhaney has been making many lives better with the inception of her tutoring business, Tutor Me Please.
Tutor Me Please offers one-on-one tutoring sessions for high-school students from grade seven to the upper sixth-form level. The services are offered in a wide range of subjects, including mathematics, English language, accounts, Spanish, English literature, chemistry, biology and physics.
Duhaney’s passion for helping students, coupled with the need for income as a university student, resulted in the creation of Tutor Me Please.
“Tutor Me Please started when I came to The University of the West Indies (UWI). I used to help students in high school, so it came over to my university years,” she said, “In order to get the business off the ground, I received help from my father and other entrepreneurs I was close with.”
The university student stated that the business plan for Tutor Me Please was focused on giving tutees the best possible attention so they can maximise on their potential and receive the best possible results.
“When conceptualising this business plan, I took into consideration the fact that not many academic institutions cater to students on a one-on-one level,” she said, “I thought it was important to have these types of sessions, as not all students learn the same way or at the same pace.”
The percentage of passes in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination for the 2017-2018 academic year shows that the idea has been impacting lives in a positive way. Nineteen students, who were benefiting from the services of Tutor Me Please, were sitting these exams and 18 tutees from the group passed their exams with a 95 per cent pass rate, according to Duhaney.
One would think that with such a passion and an already-booming business in tutoring, that Duhaney would want to go into teaching after she completes her time at The UWI. Instead, she is a final-year student majoring in the medical sciences.
“I love doing both (teaching and medicine) since each one presents its own unique way of helping people,” she said with a smile, “I hope to one day incorporate both career paths; that is my goal.”
Juggling different activities is not new to Duhaney, as she has been involved in dancing since she was in preparatory school, and this continued through her years at the Immaculate Conception High and today as a member of the Xamayca dance theatre. She is also a founding member of the dance group at her alma mater.
“Time management is very important, plus I learned how to delegate so that tutoring does not hamper my studies, and my tutees still get my full attention,” she told The Gleaner.
According to Duhaney, she does not have much of a “university life” as she uses her spare time for tutoring and to dance. She said that it is only with the help of God that she has made it thus far.
Tutor Me Please has a team of eight university students who have met the requirements of having some tutoring experience, in addition to doing well in the subject area that they will be helping tutees in.
“The group has expressed that with the business being formed they now have a part-time job, so they are able to purchase books for school, among other things,” Duhaney stated.
In an attempt to make her life better, Duhaney has made this quote by Will Smith true, as Tutor Me Please has been beneficial to both students and tutors.
For one-on-one sessions in the subject areas, a representative of Tutor Me Please can be contacted at (876) 556-3879 or email: tutormepleaseja@gmail.com. They can also be met @tutormepleaseja on Instagram and Tutor Me Please Ja on Facebook.