category: High School

Jenny Ruenes

Jenny Ruenes began teaching when she was in middle school and became a founding member of Neighborhood Notes, a program that brought music and arts education to underserved communities in Philadelphia. Teaching students of all ages and abilities, she quickly realized that understanding the mechanisms of comprehension, both individual and collective, is a prerequisite to any meaningful learning. Throughout her own middle and high school experience, Jenny had a natural affinity for teaching others, especially thriving in one-on-one settings, often informally tutoring her friends between classes.

As an undergraduate, Jenny Ruenes attended Boston University on a full academic scholarship, where she studied Education and History. While there, she was invited to tutor at the university writing center, specializing in academic writing and tutoring English Language Learners. Able to extract underlying thought processes through directed questions, she helped her peers realize their own potential in writing. She graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2014 and remained in Boston where she was drawn to the burgeoning farm-to-table restaurant industry.

Jenny quickly became one of the youngest managers at a major restaurant in Boston, as she treated management as an educational relationship. With an education background, Jenny defined a successful manager as one who could anticipate their employee’s needs, bolster their strengths, and develop their skills, positioning them to succeed. In this way, she created a dynamic and positive staff, which resulted in happy customers.

Jenny Ruenes recently moved to New York City to pursue a Master of Science in Sustainability Management at Columbia University to help tackle the sustainability issues that threaten our world. There, she specializes in regenerative agriculture, sustainable development, and circular economies. She intends to use her expertise to make the restaurant industry more sustainable and resilient, closer identifying with the agricultural system that intrinsically defines it.

Jenny has recent experience with the GREs, testing in the 96^th percentile for Verbal Reasoning and 99^th percentile in Analytical Writing during her own graduate application process. She teaches the reading and writing sections on the GRE and the SAT, as well as academic writing, environmental science, sustainability, and humanities. With a restaurant background, Jenny also consults on restaurant management and leads youth cooking classes.

In her free time, Jenny seeks adventure, whether it means hiking the Rocky Mountains, taking cross-country road trips, or cooking something totally new. She loves reading and just formed a new book club with her brother, where they cook a dinner related to the book and discuss their reflections. Jenny has run numerous half marathons in under two hours but prefers casual runs with friends over tracking run times.

Carina Gutierrez

A recent graduate from the University of California, San Diego, Carina Gutierrez obtained her B.A. in socio-cultural anthropology with a minor in ethnic studies. Having maintained a GPA of 3.66 in her first quarter as a transfer student, Carina earned her way into the Tau Sigma National Honor Society — an honor society designed exclusively to recognize the academic excellence or involvement of transfer students. She was awarded Provost Honors for five quarters for Thurgood Marshall College, as well. Additionally, she became certified in iLead, a workshop program that allows students to advance their skills in various communication and leadership topics. As someone who felt her elementary to high school years were difficult, this was a massive accomplishment for her.

In addition to her award of Provost Honors, acceptance into Tau Sigma, and completion of the iLead certification, Carina Gutierrez was invited to join the Marshall Mentor Program through Thurgood Marshall College. Through this program, Carina worked closely with a faculty member in the anthropology department curating and creating her own research of the complex, multi-layered identities of multiracial people.

During Carina’s college career, she worked as an AVID tutor and nanny. AVID (or Advancement Via Individual Determination) is a non-profit program designed to equip teachers and schools with the tools to help students succeed on the path to college and career success, who may not otherwise have the opportunity to be college-ready. She tutored high school students, grade 9-12, in subjects surrounding English literature and comprehension. Having been an AVID student herself, she felt honored to support students in their work toward improving their own readiness skills. As a nanny, Carina provided care for children of all ages and administered support for parents regarding day-to-day operations. Here, she was able to work with and support parents during vulnerable times in their lives which improved her verbal communication, critical thinking, and adaptability skills. Carina Gutierrez hopes to obtain her PhD within the near future, so until then, she’d love to contribute to society, advocate for underserved and underrepresented communities, research, educate, and continue learning.

Aside from her academic and professional work, Carina finds solace in wellness and healing, meditation, biking, reading, running, and traveling.

Yasmina Martin

Yasmina Martin is a PhD student at Yale University studying 20th-century South African history. She is fascinated by histories of decolonization and political protest. At Yale, she serves as a teaching assistant for one undergraduate history course each semester and leads seminar discussions among students. Prior to Yale, Yasmina completed a Fulbright research project in Johannesburg, South Africa; worked as a paralegal for the Legal Aid Society; and taught 10th and 11th-grade history in New York City public schools.

Yasmina Martin has several years of experience privately tutoring French, writing, US history, and World History at the middle and high school levels. Her varied experiences have helped her gain skills in developing strong research questions, cultivating primary sources for historical work, and developing historical arguments. Along with her graduate school work, Yasmina serves as a volunteer English-as-a-learned-language tutor for Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, a refugee resettlement agency in New Haven, Connecticut.

Yasmina’s love for history began in high school, where she had inspiring and supportive World History and US History teachers. Her teachers taught her how to analyze primary sources and draw conclusions from historical material, skills which she still uses every day in her research concerning African processes of decolonization and liberation movements. As a tutor and teacher, Yasmina Martin aims to create a student-centered environment allowing students to make their own historical connections between past and present and develop rigorous research questions on their own. She believes that history is critical for understanding the processes which have shaped the world around us, and it continually illuminates so much about the everyday. She is committed to working with students as they gain the skills necessary to become excellent historical thinkers and writers.

Along with her expertise in history, Yasmina Martin majored in French and Black Studies at Amherst College—where she graduated from in 2014—and studied in Paris during the fall of 2012. She has tutored French to middle and high school students in the New York City area and is eager to assist students in developing their French grammar, writing, speaking skills.

Michael Kandel

Michael Kandel is a private tutor who specializes in standardized test preparation and math at all grade levels.

Michael graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in economics and a minor in mathematics. While at Penn, Michael worked as a research fellow in the political science department and began privately tutoring students in economics, math, and writing courses. It was also at Penn that Michael began his comedy career, performing in clubs and theaters around Philadelphia. Now based in New York, he continues to perform standup comedy around the city and write scripts for independent productions. His comedy pilot appeared and placed in the iTV Festival, and his screenplays have placed in several competitions as well, most recently the Red & Blue Screenwriting Contest.

For the past three years, Michael Kandel has taught math SAT and SHSAT prep courses full-time, helping over 200 students significantly improve their scores and gain acceptance to top-ranked universities and New York City public high schools. Before that, he developed and taught an SAT prep course at AECI Charter School in the Bronx. Michael also has experience as a private tutor, helping students of all grade levels and learning types in math, English, and writing, including for college essays.

Michael is a friendly, laid-back tutor who maintains a light, comfortable, and focused environment for the student. He lets the student lead the way through each session, working on larger problem areas with targeted, digestible lessons. He takes great pride and joy in seeing his students grow and achieve results beyond their expectations.

When he isn’t tutoring or writing comedy, Michael enjoys playing basketball and watching movies. He takes no joy in supporting Philadelphia-based sports franchises, but tragically does so anyway.

Victoria Cho

Victoria Cho is a writer, private tutor, and community advocate based in New York City. She is currently a Writing Consultant for Grace Church High School’s Writing Center, where she supports students with essay writing, creative writing, and college application statements.

Victoria uses a strengths-based, student-centered approach to support college and high school students with the written expression of their ideas. Her higher-order approach prioritizes an essay’s clarity and ability to compel. She has assisted students with every step of the writing process from creating an outline, building a thesis, adding analysis, examining paragraph structure, grammar and punctuation, to MLA formatting. She has also supported students with creative writing manuscripts, such as fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Her emphasis on the student’s needs and goals for their own work align with her belief in establishing a supportive and positive space for the student to explore, ask questions, and review the particulars of their words.

Victoria Cho is also experienced with supporting reading comprehension and AP exam and SAT verbal preparation. She helps students process reading passages in sections and review literary devices. As a creative writer, she is particularly a fan of engaging students through creative writing exercises to strengthen a student’s critical reading skills and recognition of literary elements, as well as to relieve stress and build confidence.

Victoria holds over seven years of experience working with high school students and previously directed a career- and college-readiness program for juniors and seniors at a community-based organization in New York City. The program helped students identify and pursue their educational and professional goals, enabling students to consider their passions, skills, strengths, and areas for improvement. In the program, Victoria provided individual mentoring that assisted students with: reviews of their academic performance; study habits; communication with teachers; and research of colleges. Her work alongside teachers and social workers has influenced her relationship building strategies with students.

Victoria Cho holds a Bachelor’s from Boston University’s College of Communications, from which she graduated Magna Cum Laude. She also holds a Master’s in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from University of New Orleans, where she received the Privateer Award.

Her creative writing has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Collagist, Perigee, Quarter After Eight, Word Riot, and Mosaic. She is a Kundiman Fiction Fellow, a VONA/Voices alumna, and was Co-Fiction Editor of Apogee Journal. She has received a writing residency grant from Vermont Studio Center and has led creative writing workshops for New York Writers Coalition, a nonprofit that offers free creative writing workshops to under-served populations.

category: High School

Jenny Ruenes

Carina Gutierrez

Yasmina Martin

Michael Kandel

Victoria Cho

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