Richard: Riverdale tutor

Certified Tutor

I believe that a successful tutor has three key characteristics: 1) teaching/tutoring experience; 2) a passion for and mastery of the subject matter; and 3) empathy for the different kinds of challenges that students face both inside and outside the classroom.

First, having actual teaching experience (as well as tutoring experience) exposes one to a wide variety of students and learning styles, which I believe are crucial to adapting to different students and their academic needs. In my case, this has included three years of teaching Chemistry I, Advanced Placement Chemistry, and Physical Science in the public-school system (North Carolina and Georgia). Moreover, I have been a certified tutor for Sylvan Learning Center for almost a decade in all levels of Math, Science, Reading Comprehension, and Writing Skillsincluding Elementary, Intermediate, and Advancedspanning all age groups. In addition to these topics, I have tutored students in standardized test preparation including all sections of the SAT, ACT and the GRE.

Helping students achieve is, for me, rooted in my love of the subject matter, an enthusiasm I hope to transmit to all of my students. I was a scholar-athlete in high school and continued on to a liberal arts education at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. While there, I majored in Chemistry and swam competitively. My background also includes research in Synthetic Organic Chemistry during a semester abroad at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Currently, I am finishing my graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in Applied Physiology and Neuromechanics, and enjoy the computational and theoretical challenges that my degree entails as it involves fundamental understanding of bioinformatics, genomics and biostatistics. At every step of the way, I have found new things I love about science, and continue to feel the thrill of learning as the different fields continue to change and evolve.

Finally, a successful tutor has the ability to empathize and understand the different challenges that specific students might face, whether they are academic (learning to focus, tackling particularly difficult topics, managing their time), or personal, which can often infringe on one's ability to complete their academic work. I love helping students come up with strategies to maximize their potential and help them to overcome these obstacles and/or meet these challenges. Nothing provides the fuel for enthusiasm like seeing a student understand something for the first time or have an 'a-ha!' moment. I believe that a tutor sensitive to a students specific needs can help every student find the joy in any subject, as well as the best way to tackle it given the students strengths and weaknesses.