Fun Facts

One passion people quickly learn about me is that I love going to Paris. The architecture is so romantic, and nothing beats an authentic croissant with a café au lait. Contrary to a widely held belief, Parisians are not inhospitable. My experience has been that they easily warm up to you if you’re aware of a few easy words to use in conversation. It’s important to greet a person with a simple bonjour, which means hello. And just try to speak a bit of French.

About Me

I’m semi-retired after working in several different fields during my career. In college, I studied economics and accounting. But I enjoyed taking history courses. I worked for an international public accounting firm and discovered I didn’t enjoy working in business.

So, I decided I’d like to try working in a psychiatric hospital. I really enjoyed that experience and made a lifelong friendship during that time. I considered studying psychology at the graduate level, but in the end, I chose to go to law school.

I had always wanted to be a lawyer, but had put off going until that time, mostly because my GPA wasn’t good enough to get into one of the better schools in the country. Anyway, I wasn’t getting any younger, and I still wanted to go, so I did.

Law school was a very challenging experience. I went part-time because I still needed to work almost full-time. I enjoyed the challenge, but I was tired all the time. In the end, I graduated but just barely. And I was unable to pass the licensing exam in California after 4 attempts.

I took time off to just take care of myself and to get ready for the chapter in my life. I’d always wanted to give back by helping students, because so many people had generously helped me with their knowledge and time. That’s when I decided to tutor math.

Experience

I started tutoring students taking high school-level math courses in 2013, first by volunteering at my high school in Southern California, then by volunteering at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, California.

I was hired within a few months to tutor high school-level math courses at Contra Costa College, where I worked for 4.5 years. I then started working as an instructional assistant for Disability Student Services at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill.

Approach

Every student has the right to have a learning coach who will listen to that student’s concerns and gently address those concerns by creating a simplified picture of the concept. That’s the way I try to tutor students. So many problems can be reduced to a simple picture of what is happening. The solution can come more easily once you understand the concept in the picture.