Peter the Great Tutor

I began tutoring professionally at an agency myself and they fill an important niche. As a parent you don’t always have the time to sort through tutor ads to see the signal in the noise: “Who really knows their stuff?” Tutoring agencies will work to vet a minimum bar for their instructors and can often offer lower rates because they have so many beginning tutors willing to teach for $25-$35/hr. I appreciated that as a Tutor working at a tutoring agency, it gave me the opportunity to learn. By choosing to work with a dedicated professional tutor instead of an agency tutor, you get someone who is committed to your child’s success, without the worry that your tutor could change at any moment, thereby losing all of the trust and rapport that has been built between student and tutor. More importantly, as a private 1-to-1 tutor, I have the luxury to choose the students I work with and when I commit to working with a student, it becomes my job to deliver for them both in and out of our sessions together. You will seldom see an agency tutor giving themselves homework to prepare for your child’s upcoming session.

I find that, if your child agrees to be tutored, they’re already open-minded and engaged, it’s my job to KEEP them that way. To do that I have to show them I’m not a new teacher, I don’t have those expectations of testing, lecturing, and homework. I’m not their parent who has to tell them what to do. I’m their guide and guardian. I’m there to walk them through learning (and more often, RE-learning) concepts, to help them reframe disempowering beliefs (“I hate math”, “I’m slow”, “I’m not as good as those smart kids”, “I stink at the SAT,” etc.), and I’m ONLY there as long as they want and need me! Once my students know that I’m there to support them first, my students are always engaged.

I attribute my success in teaching my students to two circumstances in my life. I was lucky enough to be tutored in Math and Science for years by Professor Vladimir, who graduated the Phys-Math program from the Soviet version of MIT (remember Sputnik?), and lucky enough to participate and volunteer at Tony Robbins’ seminars (truly the master of reframing!).

Vladimir taught me the WHY of everything, I could prove why every formula I was using was true, and more importantly he taught me how to search out the why of everything for myself.

This was a huge change from my Math teachers’ focus on learning how to bang out any answer with a given formula (I was in Honors and AP!). It still shocks and angers me how many students (and even a fellow tutor) don’t learn simple concepts like how to prove a 3-4-5 triangle is what it is or why a 30-60-90 triangle has a hypotenuse of 2x. If you don’t know why, you’re just using a magic spell, and when you stack magic spells together for a few years, the understanding falls away. And we wonder why we’re falling behind in math! Thanks to Vladimir, I pass this approach of mastering the concepts on to my students so they can have a foundation of understanding instead of magic spells when they continue schooling without me.

Tony Robbins taught me that our world is a series of stories that we tell ourselves, some that give us strength, some that sap, and that we have the power to change them. From him, I learned how to notice beliefs that sap strength in myself and others and how to help change them from a place of love and non-judgment. Now when I hear a student tell me they’re slow, I offer them that maybe they are just methodical? Because if you’re slow, you’re slow and maybe even dumb but if you’re methodical, you can instead be methodical, and become quick yet patient even if you start at the same speed. When a student tells me they hate math, after a few why’s we may find out that it’s just being bad at math that they hate and since they have to do it anyway, getting better at math would make them feel a whole lot better. What a change in identity towards math, without a single “X=?”. Without the lessons I learned from Tony Robbins on how to reframe, I wouldn’t be half the tutor I am.

I feel grateful to many people that have helped me become who I am, but these two have made themselves pillars in my foundation of how to tutor for mastery and excellence

I believe that fundamentally every student is capable of mastering any concept and to do so they need to be (1) given the belief that they can do it and (2) shown how to do it. It is my goal as a tutor to provide both. Which means it doesn’t matter where you start as long as you’re committed to growing (that’s key), I’ll bring the rest

I’m in my mid-20s, so I’ve recently scaled High School and College application processes myself. I went to a gold medal awarded high school (Foothill HS) for college readiness, passed 11 AP tests (4s & 5s on all but one), and scored over 700+ in each section of the SAT (at the time, there were 3), with a perfect score on SAT II Math.

I completed the University of California of San Diego (top 30 school) with a degree in Economics/Management Science in 2 years’ time. And I’ve recently completed all three levels of the CFA testing process. 

It’s easy to enjoy doing something you’re good at, but for me, the moment that makes it all worthwhile is seeing the glimmer in my students’ eyes when they realize that what I’m telling them is both possible and that they can do it. Then I know my job is done and we just have to work to fill in the details.

I’ve lived many places in 25 years. I was born in a little country in Eastern Europe called Belarus, spent most of my childhood in a little town called Pleasanton in Northern California, and attended college in San Diego. In 2011, I moved to DFW, then on to Houston, and later relocated to Austin in the summer of 2017.

I love love love the hill country! And there’s a view from the Grove in Lakeway that is unreal. I’m also blown away by Barton Creek Pool and Zilker Park; they are public areas unlike any I’ve seen in Texas, so many people in so much water and greenery.

I am a total nerd; I spend most of my alone-time reading sci-fi and personal development books, playing the piano, and following the world of economics vicariously through real economists’ discussions. And I’ve recently picked up Jiu Jitsu… turns out we have a World Champion teaching right here in Austin!