I am thrilled to be a tutor for WyzAnt Tutoring. My background as a science teacher in formal and informal education teaching K–12 students, college students, and adults makes me adaptable and allows me to easily relate to any age group. From my graduate experiences as a research scientist, I command a strong knowledge of the natural sciences, have led fieldwork, and have published scientific papers in paleontology and botany in major journals. A year after college, I was hired as a teacher...
I am thrilled to be a tutor for WyzAnt Tutoring. My background as a science teacher in formal and informal education teaching K–12 students, college students, and adults makes me adaptable and allows me to easily relate to any age group. From my graduate experiences as a research scientist, I command a strong knowledge of the natural sciences, have led fieldwork, and have published scientific papers in paleontology and botany in major journals. A year after college, I was hired as a teacher at the Hawaii Preparatory Academy (HPA), a private school in Kamuela, Hawaii. My job was to teach biology, geometry, and SAT/ACT math preparation courses. Without any previous formal teaching experience, I learned something of the art of teaching in a trial by fire in the classroom. I was fortunate to have a previously built curriculum to follow. I adapted it and molded it to my teaching style. In my view, using multiple strategies to get the concepts across was most effective. For instance, I use a whiteboard to illustrate biological processes and PowerPoint presentations to build important vocabulary and convey written concepts. I constantly pepper the students with questions, both fun and serious, and I walk around the classroom to keep everyone moving a little, even if they’re stuck in their seats.
On top of sound and effective teaching, a big component of being a teacher at HPA was to engage frequently in an open dialogue with the students’ parents throughout the school year. I was accepted into the MAT program at Miami University in Ohio in spring 2010. I spent a semester studying principles of pedagogy, which taught me the philosophy behind so much of what I had learned trial by fire at HPA. I ultimately decided to pursue a course of study in science, which afforded me several opportunities to continue teaching. In the spring of 2013, I completed my master’s degree in botany at the University of Wyoming. As a graduate student, I taught six undergraduate general biology lab courses over two years. I was responsible f
