For the past 8 years, Mike Ptack has been a volunteer on two nights a week for Learning Edge. Mike encourages each student to work hard, do your best, and don’t worry about the mistakes. Every mistake is an opportunity to grow.
Born in Chicago, Mike was the oldest of 8 children. His family moved to Elmwood Park when he was 4, where he went on to attend Elmwood Park grade school. Later he went to Holy Cross High School for boys. Mike admits that he once had scholarship that he lost due to poor grades from not studying.
In the 80s, Mike’s career began at First National Bank of Chicago, which is now the Chase building. He started by handling money transfers over the phone. “At that time, there was a lot of opportunities and I moved around,” Mike says. “Each time one of my supervisors left to work for another firm, about 6 months later, I would get a call saying, ‘there’s an opportunity for you here, are you interested?’” Mike recalls that personal computers were just making way into the office, presenting opportunities to pick up new skills.
Today, he works for a small firm that gathers and warehouses data for its clients. To Mike, all the skills he has picked up are useful. “Everything I did became portable, and I took it with me,” says Mike. “Every time I can learn something, that is an opportunity for growth. Learning is something that goes on every day. I’m never going to know it all. It’s a lifelong process.”
Just prior to becoming a volunteer, Mike worked each day in the Loop. As his wife works two jobs and his two sons have moved away, he would come home to an empty house with not much to do. His wife mentioned this to a coworker one day. “It turns out, one of her coworkers was a volunteer,” Mike says. “She came home and said, ‘this might be something you’re interested in.’
Mike called Kara Kalnitz, Executive Director of the program, to express his interest in volunteering. He said, “I explained that I was a teacher for a couple years. I felt I could do a lot more with a single student than I could with 25-30 students in a classroom for an hour.”
When Kara asked Mike which night he preferred to tutor, Tuesdays or Thursdays, he told her he could do both. That was 8 years ago.
The first student Mike worked with at Cluster on Tuesdays was an 8th grader. “She got as much algebra as she could out of me to be prepared for high school,” Mike says. “At the end of the year she gave me a card, which I still have.”
On Thursdays, his first student was a 5th grader who also needed help with math. “I just guided him along, letting him know that this math stuff isn’t a mystery,” he says. “There’s no such thing as, ‘I can’t,’ there’s just, ‘I don’t know how to yet.’”
Although Mike’s passions are math and science, he also enjoys helping students with reading, social studies, history—anything they need help with.
“No two individuals are the same. Some students get concepts quicker than others. Some learn visually, and some by repeated examples,” Mike says.
Mike enjoys making learning feel like a game for the students. A book of puzzles, for example, he may use to teach the lesson of approaching problem solving in a different way. He also encourages students to use multiple lines when solving a problem. “Don’t be afraid to use more than one sheet of paper,” he advises. “Keep your work organized.”
Each student Mike works with teaches him different things as well. He has learned to be flexible in his approach as a tutor.
“I’m not going to always get it right the first time. I’ve got to be patient and find whatever is going to work for them,” Mike says. “When I’m working with these students on these concepts that they don’t get right away, suddenly, the light bulb goes on. I can see it in their eyes. The student realizes that what seemed hard at first, is not as hard as it looks. The more practice they get, the easier it becomes. That switch went from, ‘I can’t,’ to, ‘I can.’” That is one of Mike’s favorite things about being a tutor.
“I’ve been blessed with great teachers, so it’s important for me to pay it forward,” Mike adds. “It’s fun to work with young people.”
For those interested in joining Learning Edge as a volunteer, Mike expresses how much of a difference it can make not only in the student’s life but succeeding generations. “What we do is important, and we don’t always know how important it is,” says Mike. “What I would tell any tutor is do what you can.”
Overall, Mike believes that each student just needs some help to get started. A little good can go a long way. A final piece of advice from Mike: “The only time you’re not going to make a mistake is when you don’t try. The only failure is when you give up. Don’t be afraid to try. Don’t give up.”