Hi!! My name is Maria and while pursuing my B.S. in Mathematics I realized there were scores of students that were struggling to grasp the concepts being taught and the problem was not their brains but the lack of passion in most of their teachers/assistants. It was then in my sophomore year that I decided to become a teaching assistant so that I could help students understand math and start discovering its beauty. That was the beginning of my journey as a math advocate and since then I have taught university courses and been a private tutor (helping students at all levels of education from middle school to college). I have 12 years of teaching experience, an M.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Computer Science. In my past teaching positions I have been committed to instilling students not only with an ability to solve mathematical problems but also an understanding and appreciation for the subject. In order to do so I always aim to connect abstract ideas to concrete real world examples and I feel that my professional experience working in math-related fields uniquely enables me to communicate the value and even excitement of mathematics.