Jonathan
Certified Tutor
Whether working over practice questions in a test booklet, reading an instructional manual or an obscure book for pleasure in a library corner, we are engaging with the words and ideas of others and measuring them for their value, use and relevance. Thinking is never done in total isolation anyway but rather is always a social exercise and activity. The best teaching and learning then, I think, allows us to consider knowledge, from the most practical to the most abstract, as both social exercise and activity. This means, as exercise, that we get comfortable with the necessary repetitions of learning--reading and writing, listening and speaking with consideration. As social activity, strong teaching and learning allows us to consider knowledge production as constantly unfolding, knowledge production as a place where self-expression and communication within a larger community are not only welcome but of absolute necessity.
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Undergraduate Degree: University of Massachusetts Amherst - Bachelors, English
Graduate Degree: Wayne State University - Current Grad Student, General Literature
Writing, books, etc.
- ACT Reading
- American Literature
- College English
- College Level American Literature
- English
- English Grammar and Syntax
- Essay Editing
- Graduate Test Prep
- GRE Subject Test in Literature in English
- GRE Subject Tests
- High School English
- High School Level American Literature
- High School Writing
- LSAT Logical Reasoning
- Math
- Middle School
- Middle School Math
- Middle School Reading
- Middle School Reading Comprehension
- Middle School Science
- Middle School Writing
- Other
- PSAT Critical Reading
- Science
- Test Prep
What is your teaching philosophy?
Learning is always a social exercise. We seek understanding and self-expression within fields of knowledge opened by communication and activity between people and their objects of inquiry. To learn is to engage in this social exercise: getting in the repetitions of reading and writing, stretching ourselves to think from new angles, and then coordinating ourselves to a world of shared activities, experience, opportunities, and realities. To teach, then, is to help train for this social exercise-- to allow one to comfortably take the risks of stretching after new skills and knowledge.