In one way or another, I've been an educator and a mentor all of my life. The oldest in my family, many afternoons in my childhood were spent helping my three younger brothers and my younger sister to understand the concepts that I myself had been taught a few years before. When I was eleven I joined the Boy Scouts, and very quickly I again found myself in positions of authority, guiding the younger scouts as they learned the skills and accomplished the feats necessary to ascend in rank. In college, although I studied the humanities, I spent a summer teaching inner-city kids in Boston geometry to help prepare them for high school, and in the past year I have gained a fresh perspective on the ways that we learn and how we embrace new challenges in my work with preschoolers.

Although I have not officially been an educator for long, my experiences have taught me that patience is the most crucial virtue that a teacher can have. In my work, I have encountered and interacted with children and young adults with a host of challenges to their individual learning. I have witnessed the not-yet-verbal approach of toddlers, the nonverbal gap with which AS students face, the frustrations of students working past dyslexia, and the anger of children from broken homes. I have learned that what most students want and need is not primarily to be told what to do and how to solve their problems, but first to be listened to. And so that is what I want to offer.

I am here to take your problems seriously, however big or small you may think you are, however silly you may feel admitting them. I want you to tell me what it is that you think is keeping you from reaching your fullest potential, and I want to help empower you to overcome it.