My name is Chris, and I am a Physics, Math, and Chess teacher living in NYC. I recently received my Ph.D. in theoretical physics from UCLA, where I also received a MSc. in Physics in 2021. Throughout my graduate studies, I worked as a graduate student instructor for +5 years, teaching everything from introductory to graduate level physics and math. Throughout both my graduate and undergraduate studies I intermittently tutored math and physics to individual students by request. During my time...
My name is Chris, and I am a Physics, Math, and Chess teacher living in NYC. I recently received my Ph.D. in theoretical physics from UCLA, where I also received a MSc. in Physics in 2021. Throughout my graduate studies, I worked as a graduate student instructor for +5 years, teaching everything from introductory to graduate level physics and math. Throughout both my graduate and undergraduate studies I intermittently tutored math and physics to individual students by request. During my time in graduate school, I also taught chess to K-12 students for 15 months, working with a chess school called King's Land Chess. I now work with Little House of Chess in New York City, where I teach chess to, primarily, elementary schoolers. Between all my years of teaching, I've worked with all age groups between elementary school and Ph.D. level, having taught both in individual and group settings.
I would describe my teaching style as foundations first and concrete. Course instructors, in my view, often incorrectly assume prior knowledge on the part of the students, leading to students falling behind the curriculum. I am always gauging student engagement and understanding of my teaching content, and I'm always willing to redesign my curriculum to fill gaps in the students' understanding. On the point of concreteness, I believe in concretely deriving and motivating the WHYs of content. All too often, instructors skip important logical and algebraic steps, perhaps deeming them too obvious, at the expense of student retention. I believe in imparting intuition for WHY steps are taken by drawing on concrete, motivating examples to anchor understanding of abstract concepts.
As for reinforcement of learning, there is no substitute for practice. I provide exercises to illustrate the concepts in accessible, yet challenging ways. I am, however, open to providing written notes and solutions to complement my instruction, but I find that students benefit by refining their own understanding through note-taking and solution-writing.
