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I have been teaching and tutoring for over ten years.

I began my unlikely* career as an educator when I undertook my graduate degree in History. As I earned my degree, I worked as a graduate student teaching assistant and an analytical writing tutor in the History department. During the summers, I spent time teaching intensive remedial reading and writing programs to K-12 students and adults seeking continuing education. After earning my Master’s, I worked as a curriculum and intervention specialist for students in an intensive tutoring center before I began my traditional teaching career.

Though I dearly loved teaching in the classroom, I sorely missed the incomparable breakthroughs my students and I were able to achieve in one-on-one tutoring (something I believe every student should have access to in some capacity, but that’s another topic for another time). So, I began my little online tutoring business on the side—at the end of 2019.

We all know what 2020 brought us; suffice it to say the special and idiosyncratic but desperately underfunded nonprofit where I had my daytime teaching job soon cut the entire faculty and shut down the school. My little online tutoring business became even more of a lifeline for me and the students with whom I worked.

This is all to tell you a little about myself and show you that I’ve had lots of experience with lots of different students of varying ages, abilities, backgrounds, situations, and goals. But it’s not just a flex, or an advertising tool, or a convenient copy + paste to return to when I need copy for any given project in the future (though I’m not too proud to admit it could be one or more of those things, as well). It’s also the necessary context for this premiere post.

I am launching this space to share a little bit of what I’ve learned over the past decade as I’ve found a special kind of success with my students. I have genuinely learned a lot, and I know I can help a lot of people, because I have already helped a lot of people.

Though I don’t have a certificate or a degree in educational therapy or an EdD or anything horrifying like that, I am satisfied that my practical experience in the field has endowed me with a solid and genuinely profound pedagogical ethos that has translated remarkably well to the work I do with high schoolers, those most notorious of beasts.

As most of what I learn from my tutoring sessions in regards to pedagogy and the jungle of the teenage mind is utterly useless or at least terribly boring and/or obnoxious to my students, I’d like to share that knowledge with someone. Their parents, as well as other education professionals, can use this information. However, there are a few issues here.

(1) For many reasons, it is not quite logistically, emotionally, theoretically, physically, dialectically, medically, psychologically, philosophically, metaphysically, culturally, heuristically, literally, or metaphorically possible to share all of my insights and ideas with the parents of the students I work with.

(2) I can’t tutor every student in the world. Even if I could, see point (1) and multiply it by literally, like, 4.5 billion.

(3) Like many of the kids I work with, I have severe (diagnosed, medicated, fairly well-managed) ADHD and I have struggled since childhood with executive functioning and working memory processes. So, writing a book seems like a long shot for now. Just for now!

So, here we are. I’ve got lots to share, and I can’t wait to help.

* unlikely - this is a story for another post! Suffice it to say, I had my share (and then some) of struggles as a high school student. Much of my empathy for students now comes from my, er, “rough” high school experience.

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