"I've enjoyed teaching for as long as I can remember. There are few things more rewarding than sharing the "eureka" moment with someone who had given up on understanding. Too often, people see their own lack of understanding as a lack of intelligence. In my experience, it usually means that the teacher explains in a way that doesn't make sense to the student or the student can't see a reason to care about the subject. I've dealt with both of those problems in my own early education.

I was home-schooled up through 5th grade. My mom was learning with me up to a point, but she eventually fell behind. She had forgotten most of the material, and couldn't absorb it as quickly I did. As I began to teach myself at my own pace, I found that the book can only teach from one direction. When I got lost, I had to take a break and go back through the basics. It was terribly tedious at first, but I developed a skill for breaking down a new concept and coming at it from several different directions.

The other problem with teaching yourself from a book is that you rarely find the bulk material interesting. At first, I could get away with doing the subjects I liked and ignoring the ones I didn't. Eventually it caught up to me and I had to spend a full quarter on grammar and history. The solution I found was to dig deeper into the subjects I hated. For example, I found that reading historical fiction taught me grammar by repetition and put the names and dates of my history lessons into a context where I could see why they mattered. Once I found a reason to like the subject, learning didn't seem to take any effort. I think the best thing any teacher could hope for is to inspire a student enough for him to go beyond the lesson plan.

This method proved especially effective for me; earning me a 3.646/4.0 GPA as an undergraduate and a 3.495/4.0 GPA as a masters student at the Colorado School of Mines.

My previous tutoring experience includes teaching my younger brother (who suffers from ADHD) during 8th grade using the k12 program," less...