Two core beliefs energize my passion to teach and tutor math. The first is that, in our increasingly quantitative world, proficiency in math will be a key to achieving success. The second is that every scholar has the potential to be successful in math. My focus in tutoring is establishing a relationship in which scholars can realize that potential through content standards-focused material and individualized instruction to develop mathematical habits of practice that take advantage of a scholar's learning style and academic strengths.

Following a 40 year finance career during which I taught graduate school at Columbia, Duke and MIT, I taught math for 4 years at charter public schools in Boston and Cambridge Massachusetts. In that career I taught 6th grade math, 8th grade math and Algebra. During the pandemic, I adapted my math curricula to online platforms and taught remote classes.

When working with scholars, I use diagnostic problems to identify individual learning style, skills capabilities and gaps and then tailor a curriculum to engage a scholar's strengths in working to reteach key concepts and procedures. My typical lesson begins with an initial problem focused on the concept or procedure we are learning that we solve together, creating notes on ideas and processes that led to the solution. My role in that initial problem is to ask questions, encourage each attempt, help the scholar identify what worked and what didn't and review the correct solution.

Then the scholar works to solve a series of practice problems which begin easily and increase in complexity. My role here is to act as a resource and help the scholar develop perseverance and habits to get unstuck and to review answers and reteach as needed. The scholar then completes a final problem designed to evaluate mastery of the key concept or procedure. The scholar and I review the scholar's work on this problem together looking to reinforce positive work and help the scholar to identify and correct errors. Lastly, I ask the scholar to evaluate their understanding of, and comfort with, the key concept. The mastery problem and the scholar's self-evaluation inform the starting point for the next session.

I believe it is also critical to learning to provide scholars the challenge of applying groups of procedures and concepts to unstructured problems presented in new contexts. For example, when developing mastery of three dimensional volume (cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc), challenge a student with a large clear cylinder filled with ping pong balls and the task of estimating the number of ping pong balls. In these challenges, the scholar must first develop a strategy based on what they know and determine what additional information they need to execute the strategy before they begin to perform any calculations. My experience is that these types of challenges engage students deeply and promote learning, joy and self-confidence.