Experience Summary
During my high-school years I barely passed even the simplest science and math classes. This left me with the certainty that I was just not a 'math' person. Later in life I overcame my fear of math, started with the basics and 5 years later graduated at the top of my class in Physics. My 'rags to riches' education in math and science was invaluable when I was teaching and tutoring students who were *sure* they could never get it. The start-with-the-basics approach to problem solving lead to personal success in all my classes, professional success in front of a classroom, and very high pay in my career. The past 9 years of home-schooling my children and others has polished my ability to make science and math accessible and FUN.
Teaching Style
Math and science principles do not need to be memorized! Understanding a reasonably small, usually intuitive set of ideas is all that is needed to solve 80% of all problems. Combining these ideas with a straight forward, 4-step method, almost any word problem (the most feared animal in math and science) is accessible to every student. My job as a tutor is to find the pieces missing and help build up a student's foundation of understanding, encourage a careful reading of the problem to solve, help identify knowns and unknowns, guide the application of basic physics principles, and foster common sense evaluation of the results. I replace mind-numbing studying with confidence-building practice for those who are 'sure they can't do it'.