13+ years exp. Calculus, Statistics and Mathematics. Middle, High School and University Mathematics.

Find out more about Scott

• 1) When did you develop an interest in your chosen field and in private tutoring?

  I first started tutoring in 2010 during my junior year of high school. The school handpicked the most excelled math upperclassmen students to tutor struggling freshman and lower classmen in math. Ever since then, I discovered that I had a particular dexterity to teach when my colleagues struggled. When others lost patience, I became more intrigued as though every student was a puzzle to be solved. This small philosophy shaped my entire worldview of teaching: every student has the potential to learn anything, but sometimes it takes outside motivation. I share in a students' joy when academic confidence is awakened through an epiphanic lesson involving zombies from Zombieland, or a budget to spend at Sephora, or calculating the REAL surface area of the Great Pyramids. In my combined 12 years as an educator and private tutor, I've learned that a great mentor is what separates frustration from understanding.

• 2) Tell us more about the subject you teach, the topics you like to discuss with students (and possibly those you like a little less).

  I tutor elementary, middle, and high school mathematics, specializing in Discrete Mathematics, Calculus and Statistics. I also teach some financial mathematics, economics, and physics. I like to take an interest in my students, figure out what they endeavor, and then apply the lessons to directly apply to their interests.

• 3) Did you have any role models; a teacher that inspired you?

  My high school forensics teacher was an amazing role model. He was the school's varsity baseball coach. When he was serious, he was strict. When he wanted to inspire, he was charismatic. He was the first one to show me that teaching is an adventure as long as you have the right attitude.

• 4) What do you think are the qualities required to be a good tutor?

  Patience trumps all other qualities. A tutor must be calm in front of a frustrated student, but yet firm and direct when needed. If a tutor is frustrated and the student can sense it, the trust is gone between the two. Knowing when to interject, when to steer, when to let the student lead on their own, and more importantly to not intervene during a mistake is what makes a tutor exceptional.

• 5) Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

  When I was a tutor at the University of Nevada, I was in charge of the statistics study session. In these sessions, students would go as group of around 30 to tutors for review and work on the exam review. For a statistics review session, I had plenty of students this time around, close to three dozen which meant that the material was foreign and difficult to many students. So in order to demonstrate Z scores, population and samples, I incorporated the movie Zombieland to our review sessions: if all zombies run at X speed, the average human runs at Y speed with a standard deviation of Z, what percentage of the human population is slower than a zombie? Once put into this unorthodox and fun example, the students loosened up and personally thanked me afterwards for helping them understand the material more easily.

• 6) What were the difficulties or challenges you faced or still facing in your subject?

  Mathematics and Statistics comprehension have always been an easy academic grasp, but teaching and replicating my knowledge has always been a challenge. In mathematics that is very specific based such as statistics and probability require students abandon previous pedagogy and demand thinking on a more illustrative approach. For example, if I were to ask a student how to solve for X in an equation, the methods would generally stay the same: isolate the variable. However if I were to ask a probability student 'what is the probability of X?', the student would have to determine is this compound probability, independent or dependent of any other events, with or without replacement, normal or binomial distribution, and so on. The hardest obstacle as a tutor trying to convey this type of thinking is to attempt to allow students to physically illustrate the scenario in front of them and dissect exactly what they need to calculate. While one could argue that this is the objective for any real-world application problem, probability and statistics require their own style of thinking outside of algebra, trigonometry and calculus.

• 7) Do you have a particular passion? Is it teaching in general or an element of the subject or something completely different?

  Teaching in general is a passion of mine obviously. Outside of this I would say that soccer, linguistics, baseball and spending time with my family are my biggest passions.

• 8) What makes you a Superprof (besides answering this interview questions :-P)?

  If I were to have just one motto for teaching it is this: the role of a mentor is to eventually become obsolete.