Hi, I’m Katie.

My first experience with tutoring was as a peer tutor in physics during my sophomore year of high school. 

I enjoyed physics. I was good at it, and I had a very dear friend who was struggling. 

So the initial step toward peer tutoring was a very playful space where I would tell her jokes that related familiar experiences to Physics.

I impersonated our teacher and did many of my explanations in a Russian accent for her. (That’s still my go-to accent when a student seems overwhelmed.)

During my senior year of high school, I was a Big Sister to a little boy and his younger brother who were in a very troubled and violent situation, which inspired me to start a Domestic Violence Club at school where we collected $2000 for a local women’s shelter to help kids who needed more of a support system. 

With a knack for tutoring and a desire to continue supporting at-risk youth, I decided to spend a year in college working with the Nashville Transition Center. This was a residential facility composed of boys, twelve to seventeen, and aimed at providing an alternative to incarceration. 

I tutored the boys in math and science, and I helped some of them obtain GEDs.

I ultimately graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University with honors in Clinical Neuroscience—observing the different learning styles of the students I worked with informed my own approach to academia.

At 24, I became an early childhood interventionist for infants and toddlers with special needs.

Over half of my caseload had severe gross motor skills issues. My work was to find ways for them to communicate, make eye contact, and meet other developmental markers.

I also worked with kids with autism and developmental delays.

While working with a wide range of children with different needs, I developed my intuition with nonverbal communication. 

I always wanted to live in New York and be in an urban environment, a place that was teeming with creativity. 

I moved to New York and became a nanny for two kids. One was six and one was eight. 

The six-year-old faced some serious health problems. We spent a lot of time in hospitals preparing him for surgeries. He did not have regular muscle control, and I would need to study his face for pain in order to meet his needs.

When I broke my leg and could no longer work with them as a nanny, I applied to Columbia University's Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Program, where I made the Dean’s list every semester of my attendance.

When I wasn't studying, I shadowed a pediatric neurologist for a year.

He showed me a lot of ways to evaluate children for their cognitive abilities without them knowing they were being evaluated.

I learned how to play while examining a child’s neurological landscape.

I continue to teach this way. 

Then I had my son. 

Both his father and I were applying to medical school and I didn’t see how we could both be in medical school and raise a child. It felt like too much. 

That’s when I became a professional tutor and have been doing this work since 2016.

I am also an adjunct lecturer at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Science Department, and have taught Introductory Biology, Chemistry of the Everyday World, The Science of Color, and Ecology and Environmental Problems. I became certified as a meditation instructor, sound healer, and Reiki level II practitioner.

Through an apprenticeship, I have learned to read energy fields and to incorporate different exercises to support an individual’s energetic alignment.

I use this ability to read and address energy in my teaching. 

I incorporate not just literacy in math and science, but also literacy in the emotional language of my students.

I help my students deepen their own understanding of that language, so that they can better navigate problems in their personal and academic lives. 

When I’m not tutoring I’m usually spending time with my son and dog or taking some form of class, usually in the arts—music production, acting, dramatic writing—or attending one of several writers groups. 

I wrote a play and produced a reading of it here in New York. I wrote several pilots and I am writing a memoir. I also perform stand-up comedy throughout New York City.