Charles

Certified Tutor

I went to Bethel College in St. Paul from 1966 to 1970. An evangelical school gave a fascinating view of the famously secular decade. I graduated in English and decided to go to the University of Wisconsin and get a Master's in education. I finished, all but the thesis, in 1972, and found myself not teaching, as I expected to be, but working in restaurants and offices and learning to write.

I also raised a daughter, born in 1970, who started reading at four (fluently even aloud) and topped out of an IQ test at six, earning herself a scholarship to Saint Paul Academy, a wonderful prep school. Now she has a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Minnesota and runs a lab on the Minneapolis campus: the Limnological Research Center. She was my main student over the years and I read to her every night from early on. I read her The Lord of the Rings, all 1500 pages, when she was nine. Any random turn of events could prompt a tutorial.

My field is English, but I've always been omnivorous about knowledge, and everything came up. When she was three, visiting in-laws, I said about her that "She does't think she's smaller than anyone else" and my sister-in-law said, "That's the way you raised her." That fairly well sums up my notion of human relations, I guess, but more particularly of education. Everyone is at eye level in all significant respects, and a teacher who actually engages students this way is more effective.

I've worked in any number of (widely various) restaurants in every capacity, developing an appreciation of good food and an array of kitchen skills. A Tuscan farm girl who later owned a bakery told me I made the best focaccia she'd ever had. I owned an artisan bakery myself for a while, and was on the Food Network talking to Bobby Flay about starters. The accumulation of experience has been haphazard, but it's been an invaluable and broadening education.

For over twenty years my wife and I have been an informal parrot rescue, starting with a cockatiel and continuing to cockatoos, parrotlets, conures, macaws, an African gray and more cockatiels. It hasn't been cheap and it hasn't been quiet, but birds are wonderful creatures and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Mainly, though, I enjoy writing, The English language is amazing. Sir Ian McKellen (aka Gandalf) said it's all we have left. "Shakespeare invented it and we still use it." It's the ultimate tool, it's absolutely free and it's incredibly available. The skills it takes these days to write clearly and effectively are, with a little guidance, low-hanging fruit. I've always loved literature and writing about literature, so I can assist with those papers, but my true expertise is in writing as such, not writing in an English class. Once a student finds a voice, the voice only gets stronger, and accompanies the student into every class. I can help make that happen.