As a student, I loved school. I can tell you the names of all of my teachers from Kindergarten through high school and beyond. Many made deep, lasting impressions on me (my junior year history teacher, my senior year French teacher). Unfortunately, so did a couple of "duds" (1st grade teacher, senior year English teacher who seemed to phone it in).

After law school, I began to substitute teach and I soon realized I wanted to teach more than practice law. I swore that I would be the sort of teacher my students would remember for the rest of their lives in the same way I have my favorite teachers. Through a deep understanding of the work at hand and caring for each of my students, I strive to meet this high bar in every class I give. 

My teaching and tutoring career spans 30+ years, from my first experience as an intern at The Park School in Boston, through several classroom teaching positions at independent schools in Providence, Sao Paulo, San Francisco, and Miami, to my current "gig" as a private tutor to dozens of students in grades 3-12 each academic year. 

I bring my subject area knowledge, patience, and creativity to bear in all of my lessons. I work tirelessly to help each child understand the work s/he is being asked to do in school, whether reading, writing. spelling, vocabulary, science, social studies, Math Olympiad, logic puzzles, or math (preferably math, my favorite, but I've taught/tutored "it all" over the course of my career). 

Oh, and test prep---SSAT, ISEE, SAT, ACT, HSPT, CTP, OLSAT---lots of test prep!

School is hard for too many kids, for any of a number of reasons: the material is difficult, challenging, or confusing; the foundation wasn't laid last year for the current year's expectations; the student learns differently than this year's teacher teaches . . . to name a few.

For a student to learn, besides having a skilled teacher, s/he must develop the proper habits of mind, attention, motivation, and perseverance. If your child is struggling at all in school, I'm someone who can "unlock the box of learning" as the parent of a 5th grade student of mine once told me.

On the other hand, you might have a child who is "doing well" in school, at least as far as her/his grades are concerned, but seems to be missing something (perhaps enthusiasm for learning).

If so, I am available to offer a customized enrichment program that will ignite your child's imagination and give her/him the chance to: learn something new, out of the box, geared to her/his interests, and definitely "unschool-like;" use a new tool; make something with her or his own hands; and experience the sort of "failure, engineering style" that teaches children to come back to a problem over and over again with renewed interest and resolve.

In short. I will show your child how to love learning.

Education: 

University of Massachusetts/BA, Psychology/Magna Cum Laude 

Boston College Law School/JD, Law/Third World Law Journal 

Boston College Graduate School of Arts & Sciences/MA, Political Science 

Teacher Certifications: 

MA: 1st-6th gr.

FL: K-6th gr., math/science/social studies 5th-9th gr.