Talking to parents in China about US college admissions tests.
I graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard with a degree in biology in 1987. It was there as an undergraduate that I discovered a natural gift for teaching when I was hired as a course assistant for a Calculus course. It was also at Harvard that I discovered a parallel calling as a writer when I was accepted onto the comedy magazine The Harvard Lampoon (Conan O'Brien was our illustrious president at the time).
I began my teaching career the year after graduating, at Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco, where I taught math and biology. I've been teaching high school and tutoring ever since.
Over my teaching career in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve taught classes in algebra I and II, trigonometry, pre-Calculus, geometry, Calculus, biology, chemistry, and physics. In 2007, I switched to full-time tutoring because I found the one-on-one, individualized approach both more enjoyable and much more effective.
Over the years, I’ve also been hired as a consultant by various companies, including Scholar Den, Versal, and Decision Development Corporation, to help create, implement, and develop educational materials for both academic subjects and SAT/ACT test prep. I was also invited to tour major cities in China to inform Chinese parents about US college admissions tests.
In my parallel career as a writer and artist, I have started a band, published poetry and essays, and optioned a comedy screenplay to Warner Bros.
I continue to live in the Bay Area while tutoring students worldwide.
See below for more about my experience in education.
Teaching experience:
• Convent of the Sacred Heart High School
• The Hebrew Academy
• East Bay School of the Arts
• Arrowsmith Academy
Subjects:
• High School Physics, Chemistry, Biology
• Algebra, Algebra 2, Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus
• Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh-Grade Math
• Writing (including college essays)
• ACT & SAT Test Preparation (also SSAT, ISEE, HSPT, and TACHS)
ACT & SAT Test Preparation Experience:
Hundreds of hours of private tutoring with a wide variety of students
Teaching Classes on ACT/SAT prep for Think Tank Learning, a Bay Area tutoring company
Designing an online course for both ACT and SAT prep with Versal.
Developing what I believe is the most effective and individualized approach to preparing for the ACT and SAT, by drawing on many sources including my own 30 years of experience
More Info on ACT and SAT Test Prep
My experience also includes designing educational materials. I have worked:
with Scholar Den to create instructional videos for the GRE
with StudentAcademy.com, one of the early educational websites, to craft clear explanations and visual aids to help high school students learn biology
with Brooks/Cole Publishing, to create online tutorials in math and biology
with Decision Development Corporation, to design colorful, interactive history lesson plans for elementary age kids
with Versal to develop a comprehensive online SAT and ACT test prep course
on my own, to create the first half of a visually-oriented chemistry textbook
"Flora had some good teaching in school, but having you each week to go over problems, look at points from a different perspective and generally talk to, proved to be very useful. I doubt if she would have got anywhere near these results without your help... Having extra teaching that was effective but that they also enjoyed was a bit of a miracle for us. Thank you for all your efforts. It has paid off."
–Neil Ramsay, Parent, London, UK