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Jeffrey tutors in Austin, TX

Jeffrey B.

Private tutor in Austin, TX

Education

I was a career U.S. diplomat from 1985 to 2015. My wife and I moved to Austin in 2017, joining our only daughter here. I recently decided I wanted to tutor on my own in South Austin, where we live, teaching the subjects I wanted to teach at a low price as a community service. After three months of preparation beginning in June 2018, I am now seeking students. In addition to what I have posted here, you can find more information about my qualifications, study plans, and teaching methods at https://bellertutoring.com. My B.A. is from Grinnell College, and I have an M.A. in international relations and a J.D. from the University of Denver. I completed course work for an M.A. in applied linguistics at San Diego State University in 2017, with a GPA of 3.97. I taught introductory writing courses at SDSU from 2015-2017.

Experience

The two most important qualifications for standardized test prep tutoring are for the tutor to be a top test scorer and also great at teaching test strategies and explaining practice questions. The number of people who have this skill set is not large, and the number of them working as tutors is smaller. Whether they are working for elite companies or on their own, working with just about any of them costs more than most people can afford. I have set my fee at $18 an hour, which should be highly attractive to anybody looking for high quality tutoring at a fraction of the typical cost. And I cut my price in half if a student can't pay that amount comfortably. See my website for why I charge at all and am not tutoring for free. My recent GRE scores were 168 verbal (98 percentile), 170 quantitative (99 percentile) and 5.0 analytical writing (93 percentile). As for my teaching skills, no matter what anyone claims or how many years they have tutored or taught in a classroom, there is no way to know somebody is a great teacher short of observing them teach. You will judge during the first tutoring session whether my teaching ability meets your expectations. I don't use contracts, I don't require or even accept advance payment, and you can "fire" me anytime for any reason, so don't worry about being "stuck." My aim is to go back to work for 20 hours a week, do what I do best by teaching test prep and ESL the way I believe is effective, and give back to the community. For me, "South Austin" is anywhere that is about a 20-minute drive or less from my home in south-central Austin. For public high school students taking the ACT, SAT or PSAT, for instance, that should include all students at Akins, Bowie, and Crockett, and some students at Austin, Travis and Hays.

Subject Expertise

Availability

Any day at any time, Weekdays after 3PM, Sunday after 3PM, Saturday after 10AM

Can Meet

Up to 30 minutes away for no additional charge

Hobbies

I am friendly and at ease with young people. Since retiring, I have gladly put my urbane and sophisticated side away, and I am more casual in dress, manner and conversation. More to the point of what you will see, I am kind of a geek about standardized tests. I hope students will be infected by my enthusiasm for outwitting the test makers and, feeling well prepared, will go into their test venues looking forward to it. My passion for ESL, and more generally for how second languages are taught and learned, developed from learning foreign languages for my assignments. I still love to use these languages -- my three strongest are Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean. My other interests are going to the gym, cooking, eating out, watching cable TV series, music (rock, blues, jazz), and reading (just fun fiction from now on - crime/mystery, science fiction, espionage, and horror). I am also a dog lover.

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