Oh, the Places You’ll Go

Former United Airlines Marketing Professional and Registered Nurse Grace Butler Journeys to Career in Education at MasteryPrep

By way of introduction to her students, Grace Butler begins her virtual boot camp class by pointing to the maps hanging behind her on her home office wall.

“I tell them in my former job that I traveled around the world. I ask them to guess the places I have been. They guess Tokyo, Ontario, Jamaica. They go through the entire list, and I say yes to almost every place, and they’re like, ‘What?’ I do that as an exercise to not only share my story, but to demonstrate that they can change the trajectory of their own lives. Whether it’s traveling or something else, getting that higher ACT score to get into college is an important first step; keep those goals as motivation when the journey, or the day, gets tough.”

Butler serves as the Instruction Support Manager at MasteryPrep and before joining the college readiness resources company, she was a brand manager and marketing analyst for United Airlines. One benefit for the company was being able to fly anywhere in the world on weekends as long as she was back at her job on Monday.

With a marketing degree, Butler spent the first seven years of her career in various marketing and sales roles for United Airlines, Target, and PepsiCo Frito-Lay. But she desired a career helping people.

In late 2019, Butler joined MasteryPrep as an instructor certified to teach ACT® boot camps, and eventually progressed to SAT®, PSAT®, WorkKeys® and TSIA2 boot camps, and also College Playbook. While teaching for MasteryPrep, she attended nursing school full time working towards her Registered Nursing degree, which she earned in 2020. Scrubs aside for now, Butler chose MasteryPrep full time, and was recently promoted to instruction support manager, assisting in the hiring, scheduling, and logistical support to MasteryPrep instructors around the country. In 2021, MasteryPrep partnered with 625 school districts and institutions, impacting 341,000 students.

“It’s such a powerful thing to go into a room with students and walk out knowing that you legitimately changed kids’ lives. That feeling is something that is close to my heart. I know that it’s close to the heart of all our instructors, and it gives us that magic sauce that allows us to do the things we need to do to engage students and make them better. There were a lot of people in my life who helped me along my path, so that’s why it is so important to me to give back and share my journey with students. My life experiences help me tailor my message and effectively reach each student. I want them to be able to see little pieces of themselves in me and know whatever you’re dealing with right now doesn’t have to be your path.”

- Grace Butler

“I’m 25 years old managing a team of 40-year-old guys.”

Butler grew up in Minneapolis, child of an immigrant, first generation moving to the United States, her family living under the poverty line and was a teen mother. “I had a lot of factors working against me, but I was able to overcome them not just by my own sheer effort, but with a lot of help from organizations, scholarship funds, and things that helped me graduate high school with a 4.0 and attend college on full academic scholarship.”

In 2006, Butler earned a marketing degree through the Bachelor of Science in Business (BSB) program at the University of Minnesota – Carlson School of Management.

In 2007, her career started at Target as a marketing analyst and then specialist in assets protection. After three years, Butler joined PepsiCo Frito-Lay as a district sales leader in Chicago, leading a team of 14 delivery drivers and a $12 million a year business, while also running truck delivery routes as needed.

“I’m 25 years old managing a team of 40-year-old guys. It was a good opportunity to learn a lot about people I wouldn’t have interacted with, and it was my first job as a manager, so that was a great experience. I did that for two years, but I was not about the 2 a.m. morning life, so I looked for a marketing job to get back into my degree.”

Butler found her last marketing stop at United Airlines, starting as a loyal marketing analyst and then promoted to brand manager. For the airline, she managed a brand repositioning project, which included a refreshing of the visual identity. She partnered on airline product branding, organizing photoshoots, and managing imagery distribution. She also enjoyed the company perk of being able to fly free around the globe, backpacking in Europe and traveling internationally to Thailand, Canada, Jamaica, among others.

“For three years, I spent three out of every four weekends per month traveling anywhere I wanted as long as I was back by Monday morning for work. I got to experience all the creative things in marketing that I could, but despite how cool everything was with the job, I still was that missing feeling of going home at the end of day and knowing I made a difference in someone’s life.”

“I felt like MasteryPrep was a place to use my skills to help others.”

After staying at home for five years to take care of her young children, Butler started researching different careers that would involve helping people. She first found nursing school, but then she also discovered MasteryPrep.

“MasteryPrep was hiring for an instructor job, and it sounded so perfect for what I was looking for. I applied and found myself in Baton Rouge for training,” she said. “I came away from that training so inspired because I just knew that was the place I wanted to be. I felt like MasteryPrep was a place to use my skills to help others.”

In November 2019, Butler became certified to teach ACT boot camps. She eventually taught sessions for SAT, PSAT, WorkKeys and TSIA2 boot camps, and The College Playbook – MasteryPrep’s resource for helping students understand what colleges really want to see in applications, why high test scores are beneficial, how to compare exact costs among colleges, how to understand financial aid awards, tips on writing personal statements, and how time management and setting goals can make the most out of high school careers.

While Butler was teaching Boot Camps, she was also changing into her scrubs and taking nursing school classes. In 2020, Grace Butler, RN earned her Associate of Applied Science Degree in Registered Nursing from Tarrant County College.

“During COVID, there were days I did boot camps for MasteryPrep, and then ran across the house, threw scrubs on and was ready for my virtual nursing school class or clinical,” Butler said. “I earned my RN but didn’t have a chance to do much nursing because MasteryPrep took off so much for me and I wanted to teach full time.”

In August 2021, Butler was promoted to Instruction Support Manager, with a three-person team dedicated to hiring and recruiting instructors, managing the onboarding processes, leading scheduling efforts for boot camps and classes, supporting instructors with resources for the various standardized test products and analyzing student evaluation data on instructor performances.

“Our instructors have unique journeys before MasteryPrep, and that’s not a coincidence. Yes, we are looking for instructors who have test prep and teaching experience, but also varied backgrounds with commonalities of helping others whether it’s work in the community, volunteering for a church, training others, or a passion driven career path. The first thing that sets us apart is we are a team of people who are all here to help others, help students, and we believe in the work we are doing to make a difference. That mission is ingrained in every employee. It gives instructors that dynamic edge to be engaging and full of life experience that is relevant to students.”

“I love math and I love art, so my favorite ACT strategy combines them both.”

One of Butler’s favorite strategies to teach on the ACT is “Draw It Out” in the Math section.

“I love math and I love art, so my favorite ACT strategy combines them both. Any time on the ACT when you see a math problem that describes a shape, it’s always good to visualize and draw it. Don’t hold that information in your head,” Butler said. “Draw the shapes, write down the numbers and formulas you need to use, and all of that will push you along to find the answer. You can also make an educated guess, using the answers provided to you, either by elimination or visualizing what the answer could be based on your drawing.”

Commas are heavily tested on both the ACT and SAT, and Butler’s favorite strategy to teach in the ACT English and also the SAT Writing and Language sections are situations in which a pair of necessary or unnecessary commas surround a phrase within a sentence.

“You have a sentence; there’s two commas and something in between them. Do those commas belong? Well, let’s try getting rid of that information and see if the sentence still makes sense or is the sentence’s meaning changed? Students grasp these concepts, and it’s super applicable because commas are heavily tested.”

In the Reading section, paying attention to the tone, words and author’s language are important for students to comprehend and answer the questions well. On the TSIA2 test, Butler enjoys teaching the MasteryPrep strategy of “Drawing Conclusions”.

“In the short passage section, there’s an item we teach from about somebody’s Nona, which is like their grandmother or Nanny, and she makes them pasta. It smells good, and there’s this nice aroma. So, once you have a feeling about this passage and after reading it, you can use this as evidence for the process of elimination to get rid of answers that aren’t supported,” Butler said. “You’ll have answer choices that say she is sad, but there’s no evidence for that based on the character’s feelings in the passage. We also teach students even if they don’t understand the vocabulary on a test, understanding the tone and feelings that they come away with can help eliminate answer choices that don’t match those feelings.”

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

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