Availability
All days of the week, most times
Rate
$25 / hour
Education
M.S. Mechanical Engineering, UCLA 2012
Concentration: Design and Manufacturing
B.S. Mechanical Engineering, UCLA 2010
Hi! Welcome to my profile. Here's some background information on my education, tutoring experience, and tutoring philosophy, so you can get to know me a little bit better.
My name is Michael and I graduated from UCLA with an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering in June 2012 with a 3.9 GPA and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in June 2010 with a 3.33 GPA. Currently, I am looking for full time work as an engineer. However, since you can only look for a job so long each day, I would love to get back to tutoring this summer.
My passion for tutoring began my junior year of high school when I found myself unintentionally helping my friends on our homework assignments. It started out with a few problems here and there during lunch breaks and then progressed into hour long study/tutoring sessions at my friend's houses to help them on a homework assignment or study for a test. Sometimes we shared the same class and sometimes we didn't, but either way I never thought of my help as a chore but just something I enjoyed doing.
After obtaining a B.S. degree in June 2010, I decided to take the year off to take some extra classes, dabble in some new hobbies, travel, and figure out what I wanted to do next. During that time, I began officially tutoring with three companies in San Jose, CA. In the past year and a half, I have tutored 20 students in middle school, high school, and college for 375+ hours. I've helped students improve their comprehension, confidence, and grades in Algebra 1, Geometry, Pre-Calc/Trig, AP Calculus AB/BC, Physics/Physics Honors, AP Physics, Spanish I and II, Engineering Economics, GRE Math, and MATLAB. Based on speaking with the student and their parents on my last day of tutoring, or after their final test, every student I have tutored has improved his or her grade and understanding of the material.
TUTORING PHILOSOPHY
Overall, I want to share my passion and understanding of math and physics concepts, as well as the Spanish language, with other students to help them become more motivated and perform better in their classes.
During my first session or two with a student, I like to actively question and listen to determine why the student is struggling and how I can begin to help them. This understanding is best obtained by being patient, friendly, and supportive of the student such that they gain your trust and feel comfortable expressing their concerns with you. Establishing good rapport with a student is very important so he or she can feel most comfortable and solely focus on learning during the session.
In terms of teaching the subject matter, I like to first help students learn the fundamental concepts of the material. This strong conceptual foundation will develop flexibility in problem solving, best prepare them for their tests by learning how to solve many different types of problems, as well as remain with them the rest of their lives. Afterward, applying these concepts to specific representative homework problems will give students the ability to understand and calculate for themselves how the concept is used to solve many practical problems. It's just like the proverb, "You can catch a fish for a man and he will eat for a day, or you can teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime." Lastly, I like to be very patient and make sure that the student is actually learning the material, and not just working to get the homework done and forget about it the next day.
Thanks for reading!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
*Notes:
1.) I am willing to travel up to 25-30 miles outside of the downtown Los Angeles area during non-traffic times.
2.) I have passed recent background checks from Tutor Doctors (Live Scan) and WyzAnt (LexisNexis)
