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. 



Tutoring and Test Prep Experience:
Aside from running my own private tutoring service, I also lend my services to PS 188's Scholars Lab on Monday - Wednesday evenings. 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. I help the middle school students who attend the Scholars Lab by guiding them through homework and projects, providing them with challenging problems and puzzles, preparing them for tests, and offering my musical knowledge to students working with the music program Garage Band.

While getting my Masters, I also had the opportunity to tutor outside of the schools at which I student-taught. I tutored for the math portion of the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT), used for entrance into schools such as Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, and Bronx Science in New York City.

I acquired even more tutoring experience as a teacher 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.
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