Targeted ISEE Test Preparation To Boost Your Score

Simone earned a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Design and Ecolocy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as a minor in Visual and Media Studies from Duke University. She has over eight years of tutoring experience, including teaching English as a second language to German and Spanish-speaking students. Professionally, Simone has also worked in public health and education as a UNC Global Gap Year Fellow and with an affordable housing agency in Chapel Hill.

Simone’s passion for tutoring stems from her desire to contribute to students’ learning processes. She likes to plant an idea in someone's head and watch it grow into a tree of their own knowledge. In other words, she loves to amplify students' ownership over their learning. She specializes in SAT tutoring as well as English, history, and algebra tutoring at all levels, including AP and IB.

As a tutor, Simone is collaborative and playful. She recognizes students as leaders in their learning journeys, and she incorporates optimism and play into her lessons to diminish feelings of anxiety or dread. Her tutoring is entirely student-centered and designed to empower students.

Some of Simone’s greatest strengths as a tutor include her ability to keep students motivated and engaged. When a student needs encouragement, she can be firm and steadfast, but supportive. She uses positive reinforcement, pep talks, feedback from students, and breaks as needed. Simone also connects content to real-world examples relevant to each student's life so that it can be grounded in something familiar and useful to them.

In her free time, Simon likes to dance, listen to music, try new foods, and travel. She took a gap year before starting college and spent three months in Mexico and another three months in Colombia.

Alison completed her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Linguistics from Columbia College before completing a Master of Arts in Music, Science, and Technology at Stanford University. She has around five years of tutoring experience and has played an integral role in the educational journeys of numerous students, supporting them through everything from test prep to college essays. She began tutoring out of a genuine passion for sharing her knowledge and intellectual interests with others.

Alison acknowledges the privilege of having had exceptional teachers who inspired, enriched, and challenged her. This profound influence fuels her passion for tutoring, as she aims to provide similar support to other students on their learning journeys. She also learns a lot from students and sincerely appreciates their perspectives on the world. Alison specializes in SAT prep, with an emphasis on the Reading and Writing sections, AP courses in languages such as English, Spanish, and French, and other subjects.

As a tutor, Alison is energetic, enthusiastic, and highly perceptive. She tailors her approach to meet each student at their unique level, crafting engaging learning experiences based on their interests. With great care, she endeavors to understand the world from their perspective. Alison's goal is to empower her students rather than simply instruct them. She guides them by pointing out directions rather than leading the way, fostering the development of their cognitive abilities. 

One of Alison’s greatest strengths as a tutor is her ability to guide students through learning blocks. She believes it's very important to approach learning blocks from a stance of curiosity rather than judgment. The academic world can feel very high-stakes, and fear of embarrassment or failure can make the block feel even more intractable, like a knot that grows harder to untangle when more tension is applied. She approaches conversations about learning blocks very much like she would approach a real knot: first, she takes the tension off. Then, she rotates the problem into three dimensions to identify where the thread is lost and what alternative approaches or knowledge might provide leverage. Her ultimate goal in this iterative process of examination, gentle experimentation, and gradual loosening is to help students approach these moments as puzzles rather than roadblocks, fostering metacognitive troubleshooting skills that enhance learning and resilience.

In her free time, Alison is a novice knitter and macramé hobbyist. She also practices aerial skills and is learning how to play the mandolin.

Richard completed his Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Geography. Being the recipient of countless tutoring sessions himself sparked Richard’s interest in experiencing the other side of the learning process. He has several years of tutoring experience, including working at education centers and for a test prep and college admissions firm where he was a test prep tutor, college admissions counselor, and subject tutor. To date, he has tutored over 200 students. 

Richard's passion for tutoring is rooted in the satisfaction he experiences when seeing students make progress in each session. He finds immense fulfillment in being a part of this transformative process. His areas of expertise include tutoring for the ACT and SAT, as well as macro and microeconomic courses, including AP and IB.

Richard’s tutoring style is characterized by patience and a commitment to understanding each student's unique needs. He empowers students to reach their full potential by challenging them when they feel confident and providing encouragement when they are less secure. In times of insecurity, Richard supports students by methodically guiding them through the step-by-step process of problem-solving. This approach not only diminishes the sense of impossibility associated with the problem but also helps him identify the root cause of the learning block. Richard is also known to be kind and humorous, as he believes in keeping his sessions entertaining and productive.

Richard's tutoring is enriched by his personal experiences with the tests and courses he teaches. He shares his own story, empathizes with students, and adeptly places himself in their shoes. By incorporating students’ perspectives into his sessions, Richard recognizes that seemingly dull content can become interesting when aligned with the student's incentives. He also employs gamified motivation systems to maintain student engagement and facilitate a deeper understanding of the material.  

In his free time, Richard enjoys photography, urban planning, chamber music, and traveling. During his gap year, he worked at a vineyard in Oregon, volunteered at an English school in Morocco, and traveled to Spain, the UAE, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China!