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Education & Certification
Undergraduate Degree: Yeshiva University - Bachelors, Biochemistry
Graduate Degree: Columbia University in the City of New York - Masters, Biotechnology
Test Scores
PCAT Biology: 455
PCAT Chemistry: 449
Hobbies
swimming
Tutoring Subjects
Biotechnology
College Biology
College Physics
High School Biology
High School Physics
OAT
OAT Physics
OAT Quantitative Reasoning
OAT Reading Comprehension
OAT Survey of Natural Sciences
PCAT Biology
PCAT Chemistry
What is your teaching philosophy?
What I have come to realize is that how we learn can inform how we teach and perhaps help us to bridge the development of students from a young to adult learning approach. The learning experience that I always return to for myself is the introductory biochemistry lecture I attended in the second year of my undergraduate degree, in which my instructor explained the responsiveness of hemoglobin to the oxygen and pH environment of our tissues and lungs, and how the protein’s shape changed and thereby impacted its affinity for oxygen. At that moment, it became clear to me that our breathing process is mirrored by the protein’s conformational changes as it bound and then released oxygen in response to the acidity of the environment (it’s more complicated than that, but this will suffice for this example). It then dawned on me that the protein, in a sense, breathes and is by no means a static structure as was depicted in textbooks. It was then that I knew I wanted to study biochemistry, because it had become a dynamic process worthy of investigation and understanding. How has that impacted my teaching philosophy? As a teacher, I want to create learning environments that are fertile ground for those sorts of “aha!” moments for my students. I want to create the conditions in my classroom that will enable students to come to their own realization that physics, chemistry and biochemistry are dynamic engaging processes that inspire fascination and curiosity. I want them to become the type of students whose reasons for learning go beyond the desire for a passing grade. Thus my guiding principle, which has led me to try and master team-based learning, is to consider how to create a learning environment inside my classroom that will entice students to be eager to learn on their own and to always be asking “How does this work?” I try to find problems to set the table for learning. Or rather, I till the field and plant the seeds of interest, waiting for the students to tend their garden in anticipation of what knowledge they will grow.