Inspiration

Step Up Tutoring is a non-profit providing free tutoring to kids in the LA Unified School District. When I came on board, they were looking to create a portal application that would make a smoother onboarding experience for tutors, as well as to group the most important resources in the same place for tutors to access.

On this project, I was able to work with a team of other developers to bring such a portal into existence.

Tech Stack and Process

The biggest challenge for this project was integrating with the tools the business had already been using. We had to utilize several application APIs and connect them all to our code.

On the backend, this project included a Firebase stack with Authentication, Firestore, and Cloud Functions. The frontend began as minimal React code embedded in a Squarespace website, but eventually was moved to a complete, separate React app.

One of the challenges I spent a lot of time on was a messaging system that utilized the Twilio API to allow tutors to text and call students' guardians via a proxy number to maintain privacy and legal compliance. By the end of it, the system had additional features, such as automatic language translation.

It was a pleasure to work on, and eventually led to interviewing other developers as the team expanded.