About my work

Please note: I exclusively meet remotely via Zoom, and pricing information is located on my booking page.

Instead of teaching to a standardized exam or pre-set curriculum, I collaborate with students and help them locate themselves as readers through guided encounters with appropriately challenging material. Depending on a student’s interests and strengths, we will read a selection of short stories, novellas, poetry, flash fiction, theoretical works, and/or research articles surrounding a particular topic (e.g., a novel, a literary movement, a theoretical framework, or something else entirely).

Structurally, sessions resemble a personalized version of a mid-level college literature course. They consist mainly of open discussion with an emphasis on the identification of formal elements and how they generate meaning. I use brief lectures as appropriate to offer social and historic background, as well as introduce key theoretical concepts.

Students measure their progress with a writing-based project of their choice (e.g., a guided reading journal, a series of prompt-based essays, an annotated bibliography, or something else entirely).

This year, I made the decision to shift from offering more conventional, test-centered tutoring services because I am certain that the rise of reactionary conservatism in the United States and other parts of the world is inseparable from cuts to funding for public education, the worsening literacy crisis, and the devaluation of the humanities at large. The increasingly widespread use of LLMs to circumvent building critical reading, writing, and research skills further bodes poorly for developing readers.

There has been no national effort to address this, and the current U.S. administration especially benefits from a populace that cannot identify reliable sources, recognize dehumanizing rhetoric, or connect the events of the present day to similar historic exercises of power. I want my students to leave our sessions with the confidence to make sense of the world and themselves with a skillset that they will continue cultivating for a lifetime.