TUTORING BIO
Education:
In 2006, I graduated from Wesleyan University with a Bachelors degree in Math and Music. The Music Department awarded me honors for my thesis.  Immediately after graduation, I entered the world of education by taking a Newton Fellowship through Math for America and received a Masters degree in Secondary Math Education from the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at NYU.



Teaching Experience:
While completing my Masters degree in education at NYU, my various student teaching placements exposed me to many different teaching and learning styles, which greatly informed my practice. Student teaching allowed me to experience the inner workings of three different and successful schools: New Design High School and two middle schools named the Institute of Collaborative Education (ICE) and  the Collaborative Academy of Science, Technology, and Language Arts Education (CASTLE).  In addition to my growth in leading group instruction in these schools, I was also given several tutoring assignments with students in my classes.
 Rob Cohen

During the 2007-2008 school year, I worked full-time teaching math to 9th, 10th, and 11th graders at the Urban Assembly School of Music and Art (UAMA for short). As a math teacher at UAMA, I was given the creative freedom to make learning math more about exploration and discovery than about doing exercises. I custom- designed the curriculum for every course I taught to best fit the needs of my students. For my 11th grade class, I designed a college-prep/applied math course. This course began with a conceptual look at  Ratio and Percent and then moved into an overview of each of  the following topics: Banking with a glimpse at Monetary Theory, Elementary Physics, Elementary Logic, Probability, and extensive preparation for the SATs. I tied the diverse themes in this course together with the thread of problem solving, the idea being that math provides us with a powerful toolbox with which we can construct many models and solutions to life's many problems. I also relied heavily on the use of puzzles in this class to help develop crucial problem solving skills.

As I was teaching math at a music and art school, I took several opportunities to incorporate my musical and artistic knowledge into daily instruction. Aside from teaching math during the school day, however, I also taught a semester-long extracurricular music class to about 8 of my freshman students. This class covered music fundamentals such as reading music, beginning keyboard skills, elementary music theory, and ear training. Most students entered the class with little to no formal music knowledge and left with at least a familiarity of fundamental concepts.

In addition to teaching classes of students, I acquired plenty of tutoring experience during my time at UAMA. I frequently made myself available to my students during lunch and before and after school to help them work through any confusion that arose from the material in class. Some of my more gifted math students used this time to pick my brain for interesting math or logic puzzles, with which I was more than happy to oblige them.



Math Tutoring and Test Prep Experience:
I've been running my own tutoring service since the summer of 2008. By advertising on craigslist and with flyers I have built up a clientele that extends from my home in Greenpoint to the Upper East Side and down to Coney Island (and numerous neighborhoods in between). My math students have been in every grade from 2nd through college. I've taught math to adults going back to school and to elementary school teachers who wanted to increase their mastery of the subject for their students' sake.

Some of my students have have attended Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, NYC LAB School, NEST, and LaGuardia High School, among a host of other public and private schools throughout the city. I've been hired to help struggling students, challenge gifted students, provide supplemental instruction to school curriculum, prepare students for exams, provide reinforcement or refresher courses, and to help students with organization. I've also successfully prepared students for a host of standardized tests listed here.

I've been able continue working with the Department of Education by teaching in occasional after-school programs despite leaving the classroom fulltime. In 2008/9 lent my services to PS 188's Scholars Lab, an exciting program made possible by a city grant. Located in the Lower East Side, PS 188 offers its students the unique opportunity to have a space for studying equipped with computers and professional teachers. In the fall of 2010, I helped prepare M.S. 447's 8th graders for the SHSAT through a course offered by Antoine Education.



Piano Teaching Experience:
Described here.
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