Interview with a tutor: Jennifer Palumbo

Interview with a tutor: Jennifer Palumbo

Bio

Jennifer graduated from Emory University with a BA in English and MAT in Secondary Language Arts Teaching. She began her career as a high school English teacher in 2001. After three years, she pursued an MBA from the University of Georgia, concentrating in finance and entrepreneurship. She then worked as a financial analyst for CSX Transportation.

In 2010 she returned to the education field, which is her true passion. After relocating to California in 2011, Jennifer began her career as an educator in the private sector. Since then, she has worked as an English tutor, college counselor, and SAT instructor for various companies, culminating in a position as the director of a large tutoring center in the East Bay. These experiences prepared and inspired her to open a tutoring center of her own. (more…)

Interview with a tutor: Vince Kotchian

Interview with a tutor: Vince Kotchian

Vince Kotchian grew up in small-town Connecticut and completed the honors program at Boston College, graduating with a B.A. in English Literature. Though he loved the intellectual climate of Boston, it eventually dawned on him that life would be much better without Boston’s physical climate (long, gray winters and muggy summers)! He moved to San Diego in 2007, and he’s been working full-time as a test-prep tutor and author ever since. When a student texts him that she aced the test or got into her reach school, he still literally jumps up and down and grins.

In his spare time, he likes traveling using miles and points (next trips are Spain and Japan), reading fiction (favorite authors too numerous to list but include Haruki Murakami, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Philip Pullman), watching The Great British Bake-Off (and sometimes actually baking things), hiking and camping, and rooting for the Red Sox and Patriots. He lives in the Kensington neighborhood with his hilarious wife and their crazy cat.

Vince tutors the SAT, ACT, and GRE (and teaches classes). 

He meets with students in his Sorrento Valley office or online.

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Interview with a tutor: Valerie Erde of Veridian Prep

Interview with a tutor: Valerie Erde of Veridian Prep

I’m happy to introduce a new series for this blog: each month, I’ll be posting a short interview with a different tutor. While I no longer tutor myself, I still get asked for recommendations of tutors who use Critical Reader books/methods, and so I’ve decided to introduce readers to these people directly. The first installment, below, is with reading and writing specialist Valerie Erde. Valerie student-taught with me for several months, and her students have consistently achieved outstanding results on both the SAT and the ACT. She recently founded her own company, Veridian Prep

 

Tell us about Veridian Prep.

VeridianPrep is a Greenwich, CT and NYC-based test prep, tutoring, and college advisory company that prides itself on a small, but highly experienced, team of subject experts that provides personalized, evidence-based, and structured instruction and guidance to get measurable results for our students and families. We believe that excellent diagnostics, high-quality instruction and materials, and individualized attention have been the keys to our students’ successes.

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Native Society interview with Erica Meltzer

Native Society interview with Erica Meltzer

The Native Society, an online platform for innovation and entrepreneurship, recently interviewed me about my experience founding The Critical Reader as part of its NativeAdvice series.

From the interview:

How did you get into the industry?

In 2008, I was tutoring a student for the Writing section of the SAT. I didn’t want her to use up all the questions in the Official Guide, and so I went to the bookstore looking for additional practice material. I looked through the standard offerings and was pretty shocked at how poorly they reflected the actual test. I’d already written practice questions for a bunch of independent companies, but until then, it had never occurred to me that I could write my own materials. But as I looked through the guides on the shelves, I thought, “I can do so much better than this.” (more…)

5 tips for helping struggling teenage readers

5 tips for helping struggling teenage readers

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed (for the third time!) by Amy Seeley and Mike Bergin on their podcast Tests and the Rest. During the course of what ended up being a marathon conversation about how to help struggling older readers—Amy and Mike ended up having to split our discussion into two parts!—we covered a wide range of topics, and it was only after we had finished that I realized I hadn’t gotten in quite as many practical tips as I would have liked. So obviously I had to post my top ones here instead. And if you’re interested in the full webinar (covering the basics of what’s come to be known as “the science of reading” and walking you through a full, age-appropriate phonics program for teenage readers), you can find it at video.thecriticalreader.com.

1) Have students put their finger on the page and follow along with the text as they read

I’ve written about this in a number of posts over the years, but this is one strategy I truly cannot emphasize enough. For students who habitually remove their eyes from the page, it is absolutely crucial to improving comprehension. You cannot understand what a text literally says if you’re not looking at the words!

To the greatest extent possible, the student’s finger should be under the word they are reading at any given time—it should not lag behind, trail off, or suddenly jump ahead. Hand-eye coordination: it’s not just for sports. (more…)