Marguerite

Certified Tutor

Having served as a tutor in reading, writing, and math beginning during high school at the Spence School in Manhattan and as a math, science and English person with a B.S. degree from Yale University in Intensive Physics, whos also worked as a paid researcher at MIT, Yale, and the NEST/CSR Nanoscience Institute in Italy -- my passion for teaching and learning led to an offer this year by Teach for America, for a post as a high school physics teacher in New York City.

Although I ultimately turned down Teach for America in order to continue to pursue research in physics -- and, ultimately, a Ph.D. program in astrophysics (so that Ill be able to teach at the university level) my passion for teaching means that Im available now to tutor those middle and high school students in NY who would benefit most from my background and expertise.

Growing up as the middle of five children, I learned time and again the thrill of seeing someone work through and understand a problem or concept through your guidance. Experience at home made me especially comfortable as I tutored elementary school students at the Harlem Academy in New York City, and served as a student mentor at my high school. These experiences have taught me that every child deserves our support in helping them to realize their potential, and that -- because each kid is different and has their own individual abilities and styles of learning there is no one size fits all solution to learning. Instead, most kids benefit best from patient, effective and customized tutoring thats designed to work with his or her own unique self, and on an individualized basis.

Although my major was in science which also requires extensive math, my English, reading and writing are also among my strongest talents, for example having served as Editor of a literary and humor magazine at my high school, as a freelance writer for Yale Scientific Magazine, and even in leadership roles such as during my service during college as Co-President of Yale Women in Physics. I also volunteered for the Girls Science Investigations at Yale, leading 30 middle school girls through fun and interesting experiments with magnetism and static electricity.

Both my degree at Yale and my research at MIT and other institutions were hard-won. Thats because although I loved the subject matter in truth I did not have all the intuition for the material that came naturally to some. In order to compensate, when I found that mere classwork was not enough, I turned to online videos, external reading, extensive diagramming and other more flexible learning tools. As a result, Im indebted to those who taught me that many different and individualized tools exist to help each kid to raise their game as to their studies and exams. And am looking forward to the opportunity to help pass these tools and skills on to students who are looking for progress and an additional edge today.