Anthony

I grew up in North Yorkshire and attended Ripon Grammar School, where I first discovered my interest in Maths, Science and Music. I studied Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Further Maths at A-level and after achieving all A's and A*'s I went on to study Physics at Imperial College London. After graduating from Imperial with a 2:1 BSc in Physics I decided to become a Physics and Maths tutor so that I could share my passion and my privileged education with the next generation.

I believe that my responsibility as a tutor is not only to teach my students the necessary content, but also to arm them with all the necessary tools they will need to enjoy taking their learning far beyond our sessions.

The first of these tools, which can never be overstated, is a genuine interest in the subject! Once that interest is sparked it becomes much easier for students to motivate themselves, a skill which will help them extract as much joy as possible from all their future learning. I also like to engage my students in conversations that take us well beyond the sometimes restrictive syllabus.

The second major tool I aim to pass on to my students is perhaps a little more mundane but one that I believe to be equally as important; organisation. Not just in the practical sense of effective note taking and filing but also in relation to a students ability to organise their own thoughts. A well organised mind is much more adept at problem solving because it grants students the ability to take a step back and see the bigger picture. I help my students to do this by talking often and in depth with them about problem solving in general and how we can apply the same techniques across a huge range of subjects and questions. It has often been said that education is less about learning facts by rote and more about training yourself to think about the world in a different (and hopefully more useful) way.

The last and perhaps the most important tool is confidence. Maths especially can be a hugely daunting subject to tackle, not least because reading a Maths question that you don’t understand can be like trying to read a foreign language that you can’t speak. However by teaching students to break problems down into smaller chunks we can turn a daunting mountain of a question into a series of manageable mole hills.

As an aside, I am also a great advocate of allowing students to quantitatively track their own progress through results in mini-tests and exercises. I find that if a student can clearly see the progress that they have made so far, then the hurdles that they have yet to jump seem just that little bit more manageable. Helping students to track their own progress is especially helpful during revision time, when a sense of progress can really help combat those familiar revision blues.

When I am not tutoring I will usually be found recording in my home music studio. Something about the intricacy and joy of creating music, I find to be a perfect contrast to a busy life in London. I always find it hard to describe my music but when pushed I usually say something like “a cross between New Order and Mumford and Sons”.

If I’m not making music I will probably be out for a walk with my dog Pippa. She loves running around Greenwich Park after her Frisbee and so that is often where we will be.

I also love both cooking and eating great food, however, I seem to be much better at the latter. I am currently on a quest to eat at all of timeout London’s top 100 restaurants.