Encompass Tutorial Services

Hello! My name is Jessica Rae Shore and I am the founder and owner of Encompass Tutorial Services, LLC. Encompass grew out of my own educational journey and a curiosity that has shaped my career: Why doesn’t capability always translate into action? Why can getting things done become so emotionally loaded? And how do we pursue our goals without allowing productivity to define our worth or believing that rest is something we have to earn?

Growing up in Dallas, Texas, I was, like most of us, a goofy teenager who wanted to do well in school, play sports, join clubs, and still have plenty of time for my friends. In ninth grade, I transferred from public to private school, attending The Greenhill School. It was there that I first realized that being successful required much more than a quick brain. If I wanted to “do it all” and not drive my parents crazy, I had to figure out my own Executive Functioning and find tools and strategies that actually worked for me.

After graduating with honors, I traveled to Philadelphia and joined the Ivy League at The University of Pennsylvania. It was there that I fell in love with ancient history and discovered my passion for teaching. I graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in European History and Classical Studies, completed a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Classical Languages, and later began a master's and Ph.D. program in ancient and medieval history at The University of Texas at Austin.

Throughout those years, I began to notice patterns that would eventually become central to my work. Some people put tremendous effort into being productive while still feeling as though they are failing. Some people seem able to manage competing demands with flexibility, while others work longer and harder under constant stress. My educational journey sparked a much bigger curiosity about how we learn to define what it means to be productive and what we believe our productivity says about us.

I became increasingly interested in what I now think of as the personalization of productivity: the tendency to turn what we accomplish into evidence of who we are. When what we do becomes inseparable from how we believe we are permitted to feel about ourselves, productivity becomes deeply personal. Getting stuck can threaten our identity and confidence. Rest can feel like something we have to earn. Changing course can feel like failure rather than adaptation. And instead of becoming curious about why something isn't working, we judge ourselves for not being able to make it work.

While teaching for five years at UT Austin and working with adolescents and young adults, I saw this dynamic again and again. Many struggling students understood the material perfectly well. What they lacked were the Executive Functioning skills to translate their intentions into action: knowing what needed to happen, deciding where to begin, managing time, organizing competing demands, and sustaining motivation. But I also came to understand that teaching those practical skills was only part of the solution.

That realization ultimately became the foundation of Encompass and our Executive Functioning Cognitive Training (EFCT) methodology. Today, our work with adolescents, adults, parents, educators, and therapists is built around two equally important paths: practical and emotional.

The practical path is about helping people use Executive Functioning skills to engage in the behaviors that move them toward their goals. The emotional path creates room to investigate our behaviors with less shame or judgment, to rest without guilt, to change strategies without interpreting that change as failure, and ultimately to experience less anxiety around everything we believe we should be doing.

My own journey has shaped both Encompass and my passion for this work for more than 15 years. I believe Executive Functioning is about more than getting things done, it is about understanding ourselves. Helping people build that understanding with greater confidence, flexibility, and self-compassion continues to be at the heart of this work and the work we do at Encompass.

- Jessica Rae Shore -