About | Cassels Tutoring

What Makes Cassels Tutoring "Cassels Tutoring"? (That's not a typo, you read it right)

Well it started with our founder, Johnny Cassels, whose time in middle and high school was characterized by meaningful struggle in the classroom initially but he got it together during grade 11 to become a great student

Check out the blurb below if you want to learn more about his story

Without boring you with all of the details, I think the encounter with failure and success really shapes how Cassels Tutoring works with students

That's interesting...someone who understands how fulfilling it is to succeed but how demoralizing it can be to fail

Exactly - and that shapes who he hires, how they work with students, the way they communicate with parents. They meet kids where they are at, show them what is possible, compassionately and directly, and are there for students in a real and meaningful way as tutors and mentors

Johnny's Story

Johnny built Cassels Tutoring based on his struggles in the classroom, and the massive personal growth he experienced as a part of the process of becoming a better student.

Here's how he'd tell his story:

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have trouble conjuring up a quote that better captures my experience as a secondary and post-secondary student. For my grade 7 school year, I enrolled at Upper Canada College (UCC) while playing GTHL ‘AAA’ hockey. Known for its incredibly challenging curriculum, UCC came very close to breaking me. And frankly, I deserved to be broken.

I nearly failed out during my first year, as I could not meet my academic and athletic obligations. And, in hindsight, a lot of that inability to meet those obligations was rooted in BAD choices and a story I concocted that made me a victim of my circumstances.

Thankfully I was conditionally allowed to remain for grade 8. From that point on, I very gradually improved my grades, finally realizing my potential halfway through my IB1 (grade 11) year. I needed four and a half years to decipher my methodology for success on the ice and in the classroom. To put it another way, I needed time to figure out how I was getting in my way THEN a lot more to then determine how I could get out of my way.

When I finally saw the forest for the trees, AKA I had been taking myself out of a position of power and agency by playing a victim to my circumstances, I never looked back: I graduated from Upper Canada with a average that was almost 40% higher than when I had started and got into almost every university program I applied to.

After two years of playing Provincial Junior ‘A’ Hockey in Ontario, I enrolled at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. I applied my lessons from UCC and graduated on the Dean’s Honour List with a major in Economics and a minor in History.

I started tutoring during my years of junior hockey for the simple reason that I liked explaining things to people. Whether it was helping one of my peers differentiate a trig function in high school or showing my dad how to get the microwave to stop flashing "12:00", I derived a genuine sense of emotional satisfaction from helping people learn.

The other element of my being is my love of levity and emphasis on accountability. Though it may seem challenging to have those two co-exist, it's been my goal to create a space that's not only fun but also rooted in an awareness that the task at hand is ours to accomplish.

I love '80s hair metal (Whitesnake, Dokken, Ratt, Winger, Motley Crue, etc.), I ride a bicycle 12 months out of the year - mixing in the occasional drive, and have always found physical fitness to be an integral part of my life routine.

A lot of that story (even the '80s music!) shapes how we work with our students. Want to find out more about how specifically we can help? Click here to see all of our service offerings