John: Burnsville tutor

Certified Tutor

When I first entered a school environment, it was obvious that I excelled in some subjects, and was challenged by others. Perhaps this is why I have compassion and patience for people who "don't get it." I have tutored and instructed, formally and informally, since I was in middle school.

My own experience with learning is that if I do not understand something, repetition will not help me; I need to come at it from a different angle. For example, I rarely learn from spoken word; I have trained myself to visualize what people are saying while they are saying it, which has helped a lot, but often I need to write things down, or perform some physical motion. So when tutoring, I switch up visual/auditory/kinesthetic approaches, and also try to ground things to reality: why learn something in the first place? For me I generally need to connect new information to old information; find a point of solid understanding and trace a path from there.

My earliest education was hanging around the newspaper where my father worked, where I developed a critical eye while looking for typos. I received a Bachelor's degree in music theory from Binghamton University. I also taught pre-alegbra there, through the Educational Opportunity Program. A few years later I decided to get out of my head and became a licensed massage therapist, expanding my kinesthetic understanding considerably.

Math and music theory are two of my favorite subjects to tutor, not because I know them the best, but because they are languages that describe the universe yet can be touched and felt and experienced, though this is often not how they are taught in school. I also have several years of experience teaching sport fencing and beginner piano. As for other subjects, I feel comfortable tutoring anything as long as I can stay a step or two ahead of the student.

When I am not tutoring I do computer programming and web design, and my passions are game design, music, and puppetry; I am also a self-taught student of mythology, philosophy, and psychology.