category: High School

Jacob Backer

Since graduating Yale University in 2014, Jacob has been providing private tutoring in the greater New York City area including both acceleration and remediation. Jacob’s strengths rest in his ability to encourage students to achieve their academic potential and ease the anxiety that comes with standardized testing.

Jacob thinks it is important to create a comfortable learning environment for students. Students need to be encouraged to push themselves and will never do so if they are afraid of failure. He believes in a steady and encouraging approach that focuses on building a student’s confidence as well as their academic skills.

For over 4 years, Jacob has helped students prepare for various standardized tests, including the SAT, ACT, SSAT and ISEE. He has worked in a wide range of subjects including Algebra, Geometry, US and Global History, Living Environment, and English.

Jacob also has extensive experience working with struggling students and helping seemingly unmotivated or apathetic youth to reengage with academics. He is able to skillfully assess students’ academic needs and fill in gaps in their education. Jacob helps struggling students build the confidence necessary for academic success; once a student believes they can handle the work they have been assigned, they are far less likely to avoid it. His work with students includes supporting and developing enhanced skills for organization, essay writing, and note taking.

Jacob was a strong test taker in high school, earning a score of 5 on all of his AP exams as well as several perfect and near perfect SAT scores. He earned his undergraduate degree in History from Yale University and graduated with honors.

Outside of tutoring, Jacob is a musician and producer. He is a multi instrumentalist, composer and songwriter who records his own music and performs around New York City. He approaches teaching with the same passion and energy that he brings to his music.

Angeline Gonyea

Angeline Gonyea began privately tutoring nine years ago in college, guiding first generation Latino students through their homework and teaching their parents conversational English. She has been tutoring youth ever since ranging across a wide range of subject areas, including the humanities, math, biology, chemistry, and Spanish. Through her training in a mentoring program, Angeline practices the importance of praising youth for the work they do, instead of praising youth for how smart they are.

Angeline graduated with a triple concentration in Economics, International Studies, and Spanish from the University of Michigan. After learning about quality of life through a broad lens, Angeline wanted to improve people’s lives in a more direct and healthful way. She went to a health-supportive culinary school, Natural Gourmet Institute, and worked as an allergist specialist and personal chef. She segued into teaching early morning pilates classes and was rated on Classpass as Top Ten Pilates Instructors in NYC for 2018. Currently, Angeline is taking science classes in order to apply to medical school.

Angeline’s goal is to teach material in creative and productive ways. She divides material into manageable pieces, goes through lots of practice problems, and recaps material to finish. As a continuing student herself, she has many test taking strategies, and specializes in Chemistry and Biology at the high school and college level.

She has worked extensively with students with autism and ADHD, which has included executive function coaching. Angeline incorporates motivational interviewing techniques into tutoring. By using reflective listening and open-ended questions, she gives students the opportunity to speak about their motivations and discover how important their goals are to them. Angeline helps students develop unfaltering patience with subject matter and staying focused for longer periods of time with genuine interest and enthusiasm.

In her free time, Angeline enjoys reading, meditating, yoga, and embroidering. She also leads a Mind Body Hour with psychiatric patients at Weill Cornell, and she serves as a health coach for veterans in NYU Langone’s Goals for Eating and Moving Lab.

Allen Lipson

Allen Lipson is a dynamic and versatile educator eager to meet students’ diverse needs. With a record of success within formal and informal education, a passion for academic and testing excellence, and a broad range of interpersonal career experience, Allen brings a unique background to his private tutoring work. He specializes in math, reading, writing, and standardized test preparation.

Allen graduated in May 2015 from a rigorous dual-degree program between Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary summa cum laude at both schools with Bachelors’ in Economics and Rabbinic Literature, respectively. His test results include a perfect 340/340 on the Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning GREs, a 1570/1600 on the SATs, an 800/800 on the Math 2, U.S. History, and World History SAT-II’s, and a 5/5 on nine A.P. exams, including Statistics and Electrical and Mechanical Physics.

Allen has relished sharing his excitement for education over a span of ten years. His test prep experience includes one-on-one coaching in GED math for non-native English speakers, group lessons in GED English for classes of twenty or more adults, and SAT and state test tutoring for high school students. Beyond academia, Allen teaches seventh-grade Hebrew school classes on Jewish history and literature and mentors young teenagers for their Bar Mitzvah ceremonies. He worked three summers at a sleepaway camp as an integration counselor for campers with autism.

Currently, Allen teaches public courses as a year fellow at the Hadar Institute, a progressive Jewish research center. His previous role as a union organizer stressed the importance of building one-on-one connections with workers of diverse ages and backgrounds. Before organizing, Allen was a financial consultant for AXA, the global finance firm, where he practiced fine attention to detail through project management.

Outside of work, Allen is an avid reader of literature and philosophy, an amateur runner, and a passable cook.

Caroline Johnston

Caroline Johnston A graduate of Vassar College, and mother of three little girls, Caroline was born and raised in New York City, where she attended Trinity School for 13 years. Caroline uses her years of experience as a middle and high school teacher, an instructor for college-aged students and adults, and a private tutor, to help students of all ages with their writing, math skills, and test taking.

After working as a private tutor for a family in Beverly Hills for three years, Caroline took on a full-time position teaching English and social studies to 8^th graders at the prestigious Crossroads School in Santa Monica. While there, she also taught drama to 6^th, 8^th, 11^th, and 12^th graders. Since moving back to New York, Caroline has been teaching adults screenwriting and acting. Additionally, she blogged for a quirky motherhood website, and does private screenwriting coaching.

Since graduating from Vassar, Caroline has enjoyed volunteering as an alumni admissions officer, interviewing scores of students from high schools in Manhattan and Westchester. She also volunteers as a mentor for the South Central Scholars program where she offers academic and social support for exceptional students from low-income areas who have earned scholarships at prestigious universities.

Caroline’s unofficial philosophy is that the most important thing in life is to improve the world by bettering people’s daily lives. She tries to do this by bringing positivity, kindness, generosity, and respect into every situation.

Lastly, if there is one thing Caroline regrets from her teaching career, it’s that she was not a parent herself when she was teaching young students full time. She feels that being a parent now makes her more empathetic to children’s struggles and strengths, and better at understanding parents’ needs.

Bonnie Nyman

Bonnie Nyman is a secondary math specialist and private tutor with almost 20 years of teaching experience. She started her teaching career as a private math tutor, then taught high school math in the Mamaroneck Public School system. Four years ago, she transitioned to an independent day school in Greenwich, Connecticut that specializes in providing targeted learning support. Bonnie has experience teaching multiple grade levels and experience teaching diverse learners. Bonnie believes that student success is created through meaningful relationships and has been a middle school advisor for the past four years, too, in addition to teaching various electives that tap into her students’ other interests.

Bonnie has a Master’s Degree in Education in Mathematics and a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. She has taught in various classroom settings including co-teaching in a special education inclusion classroom. Presently, Bonnie teaches math to children who have specific learning disabilities. In addition, Bonnie teaches skills classes providing additional support to struggling learners. Bonnie teaches the curriculum to best meet the needs of her students.

Bonnie is driven to help her students overcome barriers that impact their learning, which includes close collaboration with her fellow teachers, administrators, special needs assistants and parents. Bonnie works to reach all students by providing opportunities for visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning. Bonnie incorporates various methods and best practices into her teaching, which include computer-based programs and use of iPad technology in both the classroom setting as well as in one to one learning.

In her free time, Bonnie enjoys cooking, tennis, watching sports and spending time with her family.

category: High School

Jacob Backer

Angeline Gonyea

Allen Lipson

Caroline Johnston

Bonnie Nyman

Company Overview

Private Tutoring

Test Preparation

College Counseling