Brielle Corinne Babiar gives her students intellectual space, measured structure, and the confidence to trust their own thinking.
With over a decade of experience, she works with students from middle school to graduate school on the writing process, including admissions essays and research methods, as well as Executive Function Coaching.
During the pandemic, and in response to the limitations of traditional test preparation programs, she developed a comprehensive curriculum to guide students through standardized test preparation and the application season. Rather than treating the admissions process as daunting, she approaches it as one of self-discovery, an opportunity for students to forage through their academic strengths and passions. Over the past ten years, many have gone on to secure spots at top independent schools and universities in addition to receiving significant scholarships. She values the long arc of this work and finds joy celebrating where students land, just as well as the work that brings them there.
Brielle sees English education as an architecture, one in which each skill must be sound enough to support what comes next. She diagnoses which underlying skills need to be strengthened so that the entire structure will hold. In response to the speed and expectations of our academic culture, she returns to a more deliberate understanding of learning: In her sessions, rather than rushing toward answers, she slows the process of thinking itself to build durable habits of sustained attention. She prompts students to pause, engage further with texts, track and parse arguments, hold multiple perspectives in mind, tolerate ambiguity, and revise as they encounter new or contradictory evidence.
This kind of instruction inevitably attends to the often-invisible skills that make this work possible, including organizational planning, task initiation, follow-through, and flexible thinking. Her practice has naturally expanded into executive function coaching where she balances the demands of building systems and strategies with warmth and a direct, honest approach. EF coaching has supported students’ confidence and independence not only in academic life and transitional periods, but also social contexts. Finding this work incredibly rewarding, she completed a course in coaching foundations at New York University, with plans to continue training in counseling.
She also holds an MA in English Literature from Montclair State University and an MFA in Fiction from Hunter College, where she had the privilege of working with mentors such as Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Haslett, National Book Award winner Sigrid Nunez, and Booker Prize-winning novelist Peter Carey. There she completed her first novel and began her second—both works of literary fiction rooted in historical settings. She was also the recipient of the Hertog Fellowship. Her current academic research spans topics such as obscene modernism, rejection, and women’s studies, with a particular interest in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet.
In her current role as an adjunct professor at Hunter College, she teaches composition, literary studies, and creative writing. She is also an adjunct professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), where she teaches courses on business communication, arts and design writing, rhetoric, and research methodologies. While at the University of Rhode Island, she taught communication courses.
When she is not with her students, Brielle is working on a third novel. She enjoys unhurried mornings with her dog and a cappuccino at Riverside Park, time in her watercolor practice, and the steady, ongoing pursuit of the perfect loaf of sourdough.