Like coffee, dark chocolate, and so many of the good things in life, math can be an acquired taste. I didn't start to appreciate math until my senior year of high school, when an excellent calculus teacher showed me how much beauty is to be found in numbers, patterns, and shapes. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this experience changed my life—subsequently, I decided to major in math and even to get a graduate degree in the subject. Now, I love math. I'm not joking: I read math...
Like coffee, dark chocolate, and so many of the good things in life, math can be an acquired taste. I didn't start to appreciate math until my senior year of high school, when an excellent calculus teacher showed me how much beauty is to be found in numbers, patterns, and shapes. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this experience changed my life—subsequently, I decided to major in math and even to get a graduate degree in the subject. Now, I love math. I'm not joking: I read math textbooks in my spare time. At the same time, I realize that, much of the time, math is taught very, very badly. As a person who loves math, I think it's my obligation to help make the subject less painful for people.
I have extensive experience tutoring and teaching math. I've worked with elementary, middle, high school as well as college-level students in tutoring centers, and have served as both a course tutor and a teaching assistant for college-level math courses. I've taught students during college classes, in small groups during help sessions, as well as one-on-one during office hours. Fractions, trigonometry, polynomial long division, combinations and permutations, differentiation and integration, matrices, vector spaces—you name it, I've probably taught or tutored it. I am also happy to provide help with more advanced college-level topics—it puts my master's degree to good use!
As for my teaching philosophy—everyone's approach to learning math is different, and my philosophy is to tailor my tutoring style to fit your own preferred approach, or, if you haven't found one, to help you figure one out! That said, I try to focus on building up understanding step-by-step, getting the basics down first and then moving on to the more complicated stuff. My number one goal is to create a friendly, relaxed and encouraging atmosphere—even for me, doing math can be sometimes frustrating and even nerve-wracking. Math can be hard, and lightening up the mood is part of tutor's job!
