"I'm Luca! I'm a junior at Cornell University studying Biological Sciences. For the past year, I have been a teaching assistant for General Chemistry I, where I lead weekly exam prep sessions with 10-20 students and tutor two to three students one-on-one per semester. As a teacher, I love devoting my time to making my students passionate about the subject, or at least giving them a deep understanding of it. While I have not yet gathered a large volume of experience, I am incredibly proud of the results my students have achieved. Last year, I used an intensive two-week program to bring a student's score from 20% (practice exam) to 70% (real exam), nearly a standard deviation above the class average.

My lessons focus on problem-solving strategies and foundational understanding. We begin by reviewing homework—usually no more than three questions designed to reinforce the methods we focused on last time and apply them in new contexts. We work together to extract basic rules for approaching questions from these and other, simpler questions on the student's terms (i.e. in language that the student has derived themselves and understands). To finish the lesson, we take a look at more challenging questions to practice skill application. For instance, if we're working on Lewis structures in chemistry, we might begin with a few problems that each illustrate one problem-solving "rule" before moving to a few more complex problems that require the integration of multiple rules.

In the subjects I tutor—chemistry, biology, and math—I have scored A's or above in all of my classes in college and high school and 5's on AP Exams (Chemistry, Biology, Calculus AB). I understand how it feels to both struggle through a seemingly impossible class and receive tutoring that inspires confidence and passion, so it's my mission to bring that to my students." less...