New To Education founder Cameron Smith explains how years of teaching, leadership, and frustration with the limits of traditional education inspired a more flexible, student-centered approach to learning.
Editorial Note
This article reflects my personal experiences and perspective as an educator and founder of New To Education. It is not an argument that traditional schools, classroom teachers, or public education are inherently failing. Schools operate within complex academic, staffing, financial, legal, and organizational realities, and educators often do extraordinary work within those limitations.
My frustration came from repeatedly seeing situations in which an individual student needed something different from what a larger system could realistically provide. New To Education grew from my belief that additional educational options can complement traditional schools while giving learners and educators more flexibility, choice, and opportunity.
I Became Frustrated With a System That Could Not Always Slow Down
New To Education did not begin because I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to own an education company. The idea developed gradually through years of teaching, coaching, studying educational leadership, and watching students navigate systems that were trying to meet many different needs at the same time.
As a teacher, I learned quickly that students sitting in the same classroom are not necessarily starting from the same place. One student may understand a concept immediately, while another may be missing foundational knowledge from years earlier. A student who appears quiet may understand the material but be uncomfortable asking questions publicly. Another may be ready for something more challenging long before the class is prepared to move forward.
A teacher can recognize all of those differences and still be limited in what can realistically be done about them. There are standards to teach, lessons to prepare, assessments to administer, accommodations to provide, behavior to manage, families to communicate with, meetings to attend, and deadlines that do not disappear because one learner needs additional time.
That tension stayed with me. A school can be filled with caring and talented educators while still struggling to give every student exactly what that student needs at the moment they need it.
My frustration was not with teachers. In many ways, it came from seeing how much teachers were expected to accomplish inside systems that could not always slow down for the individual.
The Problem Was Bigger Than Individual Teachers
It would have been easy to conclude that the solution was simply better teaching. Teaching quality certainly matters, as do preparation, leadership, expectations, curriculum, and school culture. But years in education made me increasingly aware that some challenges are structural.
A teacher responsible for an entire classroom simply does not have the same amount of time available to one learner as an educator working with that student individually. A school operating on a fixed calendar cannot redesign its schedule every time one student needs to slow down or another needs to accelerate. A curriculum designed to provide consistency across classrooms cannot simultaneously become completely individualized for every learner.
Those structures are not necessarily bad. Schools need organization, shared expectations, schedules, standards, and accountability. The challenge appears when a structure designed to serve a group becomes the only educational pathway available to an individual.
I began asking a different question: What if students had more options when the classroom could not provide everything they needed?
That question became one of the foundations of New To Education.
I Saw Students Turn Academic Difficulty Into a Judgment About Themselves
One of the hardest parts of teaching was watching students begin to define themselves by the subjects they struggled with.
A learner might initially say that they did not understand a particular lesson. After enough frustration, that could turn into believing they were simply bad at the entire subject. Over time, some students began questioning whether they were capable of succeeding academically at all.
Those conclusions often failed to capture what was actually happening.
A student struggling with algebra may have missed an important foundational concept years earlier. Someone having difficulty writing may have strong ideas but need help organizing and communicating them. A learner studying another language may understand far more than they feel comfortable speaking in front of other people.
Difficulty does not always mean inability. Sometimes it means the learner needs more time, a different explanation, another environment, stronger foundational knowledge, or simply an opportunity to ask questions without feeling embarrassed.
That distinction became important to the philosophy behind New To Education. When a learner is struggling, I believe the first question should be what they need—not what we assume they are incapable of doing.
The Classroom Eventually Has to Move Forward
Every teacher understands a difficult reality: eventually, the class has to continue.
Teachers can reteach concepts, provide additional practice, offer interventions, meet with students individually when time allows, and recommend other support. Schools can create tutoring programs, academic interventions, after-school opportunities, and specialized services.
Even with those efforts, the calendar continues. The next unit begins, another assessment arrives, and eventually a new semester starts.
For a student who never fully understood the earlier material, those unfinished concepts can accumulate. New learning may depend on knowledge that was never securely developed, making each new lesson more difficult than the last.
Individualized tutoring creates a different possibility because the lesson does not necessarily have to move forward simply because the calendar says it should. An educator can stop, identify where the confusion began, revisit an earlier skill, and rebuild from there.
Sometimes moving forward requires going backward first.
That flexibility was one of the things I wanted New To Education to make more accessible.
I Wanted Learners to Have More Ownership
Traditional education requires schools to make many decisions on behalf of students. Learners generally do not choose their classroom teacher, determine the pace of the course, select the instructional approach, or design their daily schedule.
There are practical reasons for that. A school serving hundreds or thousands of students cannot operate as hundreds or thousands of completely independent educational programs.
Outside the traditional classroom, however, learners can have more choice.
A student seeking additional support can look for an educator whose expertise, personality, availability, teaching approach, and expectations make sense for that individual learner. Someone who needs more time can seek it. A student who wants an additional challenge can pursue that as well. Families can look beyond their immediate community when the type of support they need is not available locally.
I believe that kind of choice matters because the relationship between an educator and a learner matters.
Teaching is not simply transferring information from one person to another. Communication, trust, patience, expectations, personality, and the way difficult ideas are explained can all influence whether a student connects with the material.
The educator who works exceptionally well with one learner may not be the best match for another. Giving students greater ownership over that relationship became an important part of how I thought about New To Education.
Tutoring Should Build Independence, Not Dependence
I also became frustrated with the idea that academic support should simply help students finish whatever assignment was due next.
There is value in helping someone understand the work directly in front of them, but good tutoring should accomplish more than getting through tonight's homework.
If a student receives help with an essay, the goal should not simply be producing one stronger paper. The learner should leave understanding more about organization, evidence, argumentation, grammar, or communication. If someone needs help with mathematics, the objective should not stop at reaching the correct answer. The student should understand why the method works and become better prepared to approach the next problem independently.
The purpose of effective educational support should be growth.
A tutor should not become necessary because the student has never learned to operate without one. Ideally, strong tutoring gradually makes the learner more capable of working independently.
That distinction is important to me because education should ultimately expand what people can do for themselves.
My Leadership Experiences Changed How I Viewed the Problem
My thinking about New To Education was shaped by more than classroom teaching.
Before entering education, I served in the United States Marine Corps. Later, I pursued graduate education in secondary education and educational leadership. Those experiences took place in very different environments, but together they influenced the way I think about leadership, standards, responsibility, and human development.
Military service reinforced the importance of accountability, preparation, discipline, and clear expectations. Teaching added another dimension. Standards matter, but people also need guidance, feedback, patience, and opportunities to improve. Simply demanding a higher level of performance does not automatically teach someone how to reach it.
Educational leadership pushed me to consider these questions beyond the individual classroom. Systems matter because systems influence what educators and students are actually able to do. A great idea can produce disappointing results if the surrounding structure makes it difficult to implement well.
Those experiences eventually changed the question I was asking. Instead of only wondering what schools should do differently, I began wondering what I could build differently.
New To Education grew from that shift.
I Wanted Educators to Have More Opportunities Too
The limitations I noticed were not confined to students. Education systems can also restrict how educators use their knowledge.
Teachers spend years developing subject expertise, instructional strategies, communication skills, curriculum knowledge, and an understanding of how people learn. Yet much of that expertise may be used only within one classroom, school, schedule, or position.
Technology creates possibilities that did not exist for earlier generations of educators. A teacher can potentially support learners outside the local community, develop educational resources, teach courses, share professional knowledge, write, mentor, consult, or create services based on years of accumulated experience.
I believe that matters for students as well. When educators have more ways to share their knowledge, learners gain access to a wider range of experiences, perspectives, subjects, and instructional approaches.
From the beginning, I wanted New To Education to create opportunities on both sides of the learning relationship. Students should have more ways to find support, and educators should have more ways to use what they know.
Technology Made the Idea Possible, but Technology Was Never the Point
Online education is often discussed primarily in terms of technology. Websites, video calls, scheduling systems, digital resources, online payments, and learning platforms certainly make modern educational services possible.
But technology was never the part that interested me most.
The relationship between people was.
Technology is useful because it can remove barriers between a learner and someone capable of helping them. A student no longer has to be limited entirely by which educators happen to live nearby. An adult learner can study around a work schedule. Teachers can reach learners outside their immediate communities, and people can continue learning across different stages of life.
At the same time, building New To Education has made me appreciate the limits of technology. A platform can deliver information, organize schedules, simplify communication, and make connections easier, but it cannot automatically create good teaching.
Teaching still requires judgment. Someone has to recognize why the learner is confused, determine whether to slow down or push forward, choose a different explanation, and understand when the problem is not the content itself but confidence, communication, or missing foundational knowledge.
Technology can support education.
People still make education meaningful.
Building New To Education Made the Problems Look More Complicated
There is a major difference between criticizing a system and trying to build something yourself.
Once I began operating New To Education, problems that once appeared straightforward became much more complicated.
If educational services should remain affordable, how do we also respect the value of the educator's time? If a platform gives learners more options, how do we make those options useful rather than overwhelming? If we want education to cross geographic boundaries, how do we account for different schedules, expectations, experiences, and economic circumstances? If technology makes education more convenient, how do we prevent convenience from replacing meaningful learning?
Those questions do not have simple answers.
Building an education business has actually made me more cautious about criticizing schools because I understand more clearly how organizations are constantly balancing competing priorities. Leaders make decisions with limited time, limited resources, incomplete information, and responsibilities that are not always visible from the outside.
That realization did not erase the frustration that contributed to New To Education. It changed what I did with it.
Criticism is easy when someone else is responsible for solving the problem. Building something forces you to accept responsibility for your own decisions.
New To Education Is Not an Attempt to Replace Schools
New To Education was never created because I believed schools should disappear.
Schools provide communities, structured learning environments, specialized professionals, extracurricular opportunities, student services, relationships, and experiences that an online tutoring platform cannot simply reproduce. Classroom teachers also do work that is often underestimated by people who have never been responsible for an entire room of students.
What I believe is that traditional schools do not have to be the only educational option available to a learner.
There is room for classroom instruction and tutoring. There is room for universities and independent courses. There is room for online learning and face-to-face education. There is room for structured programs and individualized support.
Different people need different pathways at different moments in their lives.
New To Education is intended to become one of those pathways—not a replacement for everything that already exists.
The Vision Became Bigger Than Tutoring
As New To Education developed, I realized that the underlying issue I cared about was larger than tutoring.
It was opportunity.
A student seeking academic support is trying to create an opportunity to succeed in school. An educator looking to teach outside the classroom may be trying to create a new professional opportunity. An adult learning a language, developing a skill, preparing for a career transition, or trying to understand an unfamiliar subject is also attempting to move forward.
Education connects those experiences.
That is why I see New To Education as something capable of becoming broader than a tutoring transaction. Tutoring remains important, but the larger vision involves connecting people with knowledge, educators, resources, professional support, and opportunities to continue growing.
The exact services and technology will continue evolving as the business develops. The principle behind them is more important than any individual feature.
Education should help people move forward.
What My Frustration Eventually Taught Me
Looking back, I no longer see my frustration with education in exactly the same way I did earlier in my career.
Some of it was justified. Some of it came from seeing genuine limitations in systems trying to serve large numbers of students. Some of it also came from not yet understanding how difficult it is to design organizations that balance individual needs with limited resources.
Building New To Education has made me appreciate both realities.
Schools can do important work and still have limitations. Teachers can care deeply and still lack enough time. An educational idea can sound excellent and still fail when the execution is poor. A business can promise flexibility and still discover that flexibility creates new challenges of its own.
The answer is not pretending that one model can solve every educational problem.
The answer, in my view, is creating more good options.
That is what I want New To Education to contribute.
Key Takeaways
New To Education grew from years of seeing the tension between individual student needs and systems designed to serve groups. My frustration was not primarily with teachers; it came from recognizing that even excellent educators cannot always provide unlimited time, individualized pacing, or completely personalized instruction within a traditional classroom.
The business was shaped around several ideas that emerged from those experiences: learners should have greater access to individualized support, educators should have more opportunities to share their expertise, technology should connect people rather than replace human teaching, and education should create multiple pathways for people to grow.
Building the company has also taught me that improving education is more difficult than criticizing it. Access, quality, affordability, flexibility, and sustainability sometimes compete with one another. New To Education is my attempt to keep working through those challenges while remembering why the business exists in the first place: to create opportunities through learning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was New To Education created because I believe traditional schools are failing?
No. New To Education grew from recognizing that schools and classroom teachers operate within real limitations. The goal is to provide additional educational choices and support, not to argue that one model should replace every other form of education.
What problem was New To Education originally trying to address?
One of the central problems was the gap between what an individual learner may need and what a larger classroom can realistically provide. Individualized educational support can create more time, flexibility, choice, and opportunities for different explanations when a learner needs them.
Is New To Education only about tutoring?
Tutoring is an important part of the company's foundation, but the larger vision is centered on connecting education with opportunity. That means creating ways for learners, educators, professionals, and others to continue learning, teaching, developing skills, and sharing expertise as the platform grows.
Final Thoughts
My frustration with education never came from believing teachers did not care enough. In many ways, it came from seeing how much educators cared while also recognizing how difficult it was for one person to meet every need inside a system responsible for many students at once.
For years, I could identify things I thought education should do differently. Building New To Education forced me to confront a much harder question: if I believed learners needed more options, what was I willing to build?
That changed frustration into responsibility.
I now have to think about the same kinds of questions any educational organization faces. How do we improve access while maintaining quality? How do we give people choices without making the experience unnecessarily complicated? How do we use technology without losing the human relationships that make learning meaningful? How do we listen when something is not working and have the willingness to change it?
I do not believe New To Education has a perfect answer to every one of those questions. I do believe they are worth asking.
What began as frustration with the limits I saw in education eventually became an attempt to build another pathway—one that gives learners additional choices, gives educators additional opportunities, and treats education as something that can continue throughout a person's life.
That is how a teacher's frustration with the system became New To Education.
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Sources
New To Education — Official Website
What Running New To Education Has Taught Me About Education
What Makes New To Education Different From Traditional Education Companies
