I Chose My Inequality
Sarina Shohet | Founder & Director, Pando Tutors
Since graduating in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve been on the receiving end of sad faces, pitied looks, condolences, etc. The truth is, I was devastated and pitiful, not to mention unemployed. Everyone I knew got to shake hands with their dean, pour champagne with their parents, and toast to the end of their studies under their celebratory, albeit silly, square caps. I finished my last days not in the library, but in my childhood bedroom in my hometown. My neighbors were wonderful — they hosted the best middle-of-the-street corona graduation around. But afterwards, instead of shaking hands with the dean, I pulled on my Cal sweatpants and cozied up in front of YouTube, watching commencement address after commencement address, trying to convince myself that this was celebration enough.
One particular speech stands out. Bill Gates. Harvard. 2007. He centers his talk around inequality, and he ends with a call to action- one that left an indelible mark on my own subconscious. He exhorts each of the graduates to adopt an inequity, and to become a specialist on it. “For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them,” he counsels.
You’ve probably heard of the achievement gap, the observed and persistent disparity in measures of educational performance among subgroups of U.S. students. The world is waking up more every day to the fact that the achievement gap that we perceive is actually the result of an opportunity gap- the arbitrary circumstances that determine one’s opportunities in life, including their academic outcomes. In order to close the achievement gap, I’ve come to understand, we must first confront the opportunity gap.
That’s why I created Pando. Pando is a tutoring company that seeks to aid K-college students by providing tutoring services to complement student learning during the pandemic and beyond. By subsidizing and covering the costs of services for clients who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford tutoring, Pando aims to provide educational opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise be available to so many of us.
Pando doesn’t just seek to address educational inequities, though. Pando is also a necessary answer to the rise of unemployed individuals, myself included, all across the country. Tutoring with Pando is a much needed source of income for many in our community. Already we employ over 20 recent college graduates and retired teachers.
I often flash back to the graduation I never had and realize how poetic it is that the world should fall apart just as we entered it. The class of 2020 was ready to take on the world with or without graduation. Now we just know our charge. I didn’t realize it when I first started building the company, but Pando is the first iteration of my lifelong dedication to my own adopted inequity: educational inequity.
Join me in this battle. Talk to your family and friends about the impact of their investments in private tutoring as advancing their children at the expense of a widening achievement gap. Recognize that’s avoidable, if only you invest in education that will help your child and others. That way you are not only ensuring that your student is keeping up with their studies, but you’re working towards the American ideal of education as a collective responsibility.
