My name is Dan, and I am an academic tutor and former high school teacher located in Boulder, Colorado. I earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from Stanford University, and I am currently engaged in academic work in the Photonics and Quantum Engineering Research Area at CU Boulder.
I provide private lessons primarily for high school and college students. My tutoring services include academic skills coaching, standardized test (SAT and ACT) preparation, college application assistance, regular homework help, and curricular companions for advanced students.
To learn more about my background and credentials, please read my 'About' page.
About MeMy goal at Village Tutoring is to create optimal conditions for your child’s academic success and personal well-being. I do so by providing instruction that aligns with my students’ individual needs and interests, sharpens their skills in quantitative analysis and critical thinking, and helps them generate the confidence and intrinsic motivation they need to thrive in and outside of academia.
Below are a few quotes from people whose writings have influenced my views on education. Although scholars from the Enlightenment and antiquity generally had the greatest impact on my understanding of the value and purpose of education, I am not a luddite when it comes to my educational practices—I use plenty of modern technology in my own scholarly endeavors, and I place great emphasis on teaching students how to employ modern technology without letting it become a distraction.
Our tutors never stop bawling into our ears, as though they were pouring water into a funnel; and our task is only to repeat what has been told us. I should like the tutor to correct this practice, and right from the start, according to the capacity of the mind he has in hand, to begin putting it through its paces... sometimes clearing the way for him, sometimes letting him clear his own way.
To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness. Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one's true business in life or to find that one has drifted or been forced by circumstance into an uncongenial calling. A right occupation means simply that the aptitudes of a person are in adequate play, working with the minimum of friction and the maximum of satisfaction.
Economic growth requires investment in things—more machines, more basic facilities like highways or broadband—and in people, who need more and better education. Knowledge needs to be acquired and extended. Some of that extension is the product of new basic science, and some of it comes from the engineering that turns science into goods and services.
Do not train children to learn by force or harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds.
In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long.
My teaching practices revolve largely around the following principles.
To read more of my thoughts on teaching and get a better sense of how I work with students, please take a look at my About page.
