Educator

Teaching at SLOCA

I teach Algebra and Geometry at San Luis Obispo Classical Academy High School.

1-on-1 Tutoring

I tutor high school and college students one on one in math, physics and computer science. See tutoring for subjects and rates.

Computer Literacy @ YouthTech Inc.

As a lead instructor at YouthTech, I taught computer science to more than 120 students aged 8 to 16: everything from Scratch and building games in Roblox Studio to video editing, web development and animation.

My Teaching Philosophy

I believe every student is a person first. Before improving academically in any subject, a student first needs to work on improving themselves and growing in virtue. Only then can I, as their teacher, bring about academic excellence.

There are two kinds of teaching I do:

1. Teaching the mind and the person as a whole

Learning is a good endeavor in and of itself.

Here I teach subjects from first principles: understanding how things (equations, theorems, computers) actually work. What does it mean to know how something works? To truly know it? To think like an engineer is to understand things from the ground up, and I love helping students understand every subject from the perspective of physics and logic. My main goal here is to grow the logos: to help students develop their critical thinking and problem solving, so they can not only solve math problems, but see the world logically, as a set of things that interact with one another.

2. Teaching the specifics

Learning as a means to an end.

This covers everything that is a means to an end: AP exams, the SAT and ACT, class tests, midterms and finals.

We would all love to focus only on growing the logos, but there are real things to study for. Tests and exams can shape a student's future: which universities they get into, whether they earn college credit, and what grade they get in a class.

Taking a test is its own skill, separate from the subject being tested. Some students have “cracked the code” and found strategies that make them better test takers in any subject.

These tests are “gamify-able.” You can study and practice for them in specific ways that maximize your score, and I train students to be better test takers, equipped with those strategies.

I help students reach their academic goals, whether that's acing a test, turning around a failing grade, getting a 5 on the AP Calculus AB exam, or getting the score they need on college entrance exams.