As an individual with broad undergraduate mathematics experience, an advanced degree in education, and formal experience assisting and tutoring students in various subject areas, I am an ideal fit for a student or parent searching for a knowledgeable, student-oriented tutor. Liberally educated and well-versed in a number of academic disciplines, my specialties are any and all areas of middle and high school mathematics, including prealgebra, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, precalculus, calculus, and SAT prep. As an undergraduate student, I successfully completed 14 mathematics courses, including an independent research project that stemmed from a summer research experience. In addition to presenting this research to professionals, politicians, and other undergraduate students at a two-day poster session in Washington, D.C., my work was published in a professional mathematical journal in 2009. The culmination of my undergraduate studies was my graduation from the College of the Holy Cross in 2008 with a B.A. in Mathematics.
During the 2009-2010 school year, I completed a Master's program in Education at the University of New Haven as well as an education internship at James Hillhouse High School in New Haven. While completing readings and coursework strengthened my abstract understanding of the qualities and practices of an effective teacher, it was my field experience - my daily work in classrooms and with students -that allowed me to develop my identity as a educator. I honed my instructional abilities, became more adept at addressing students' diverse academic needs, and found ways to holistically educate students by teaching them effective study habits and organizational skills in addition to course content knowledge. I frequently took advantage of teachable moments to lead students to develop knowledge and understanding as well as to help them identify and comprehend connections within the material. As such, my approach to teaching or tutoring is constructivist in nature - though I assist a student with identifying the individual pieces of knowledge or specific skills needed to tackle or solve a problem, I give a student time and space to assemble these constituent parts and recognize the connections inherent in the problem-solving process. In this way, my primary role is to facilitate and guide while the student's primary role is to actively construct his or her own knowledge and understanding. In addition to being constructivist in nature, this approach emphasizes the importance of the student; as such, it is very much student-centered and student-oriented.
In closing, I would like to communicate that I am very proactive and goal-oriented when working with students. I prefer to gather as much information as possible about an individual student's background in a subject, current comfort and confidence levels with a subject, and future subject-related goals, and I seek to acquire such helpful information as early as possible in my work with a student. This knowledge, along with information about an individual student's strengths and weaknesses, frames the tutoring experience and allows me to design and implement an individualized and comprehensive approach that meets the needs of a particular student.
back to top