Teacher Archives

Amy Mitchell

September 2, 2022

Amy Mitchell is an experienced Private Tutor and mentor with a strong background in both academics and student guidance. A graduate of Cornell University’s Charles H. Dyson School, she earned a BS in Applied Economics and Management with a minor in Communications. While at Cornell, Amy co-founded a nonprofit addressing educational achievement gaps and participated in Big Brothers Big Sisters, mentoring local middle and high school students.

Born and raised in Stamford, CT, Amy attended King and Low-Heywood Thomas School, now called the King School. With a strong aptitude for mathematics, she actively participated in the high school’s math team for all four years and served as a teacher’s assistant for freshman and sophomore algebra classes during her junior year.

Amy pursued her undergraduate education at Cornell’s undergraduate business school, earning a BS in Applied Economics and Management with a minor in Communications. While on campus, she channeled her passion for education by co-founding a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the educational achievement gap. Additionally, Amy contributed to the university’s “Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS)” chapter, engaging with local middle and high school students to impart knowledge about campus life and culture.

Her commitment to BBBS extended beyond graduation when she joined the New York City chapter, where she was matched with a high school mentee. Amy continued this mentorship experience until her mentee successfully graduated from the program and high school, eventually earning both an undergraduate and master’s degree from Syracuse University. Throughout this period, Amy not only guided her mentee through the college application process but also played a pivotal role in her personal development, fostering a unique and enduring friendship.

Amy’s professional journey began as a financial analyst at a management consulting firm, followed by a position at a global bank. After a few years in the corporate world, Amy shifted her focus to her long-standing passion for dance. She now actively teaches, choreographs, and performs, sharing her love of movement and artistic expression with students and audiences alike.

Subject Matter Expertise for Private Tutoring: Remedial Math, Algebra I & II, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus, Economics, Standardized Test Preparation across all sections, including the ISEE, SAT, & ACT

Charlotte Harary-Shechtman

August 24, 2022

Charlotte Harary-Shechtman’s passion for working with children began from an early age. She is excited when she gets to guide students into reaching a level of self-efficacy in order to enhance learning and confidence. Charlotte believes in connecting to each child she works with and the importance of trust in the teacher-student relationship. Doing so creates a safe space for the child to ask questions and learn with comfort. She works to foster a greater understanding of the student’s unique capabilities and needs. She believes in building on students’ strengths in order to help them overcome their challenges. Encouraging the growth mindset is cultivated through the language she uses, instilling the belief in every child that they have the potential to succeed.

After much experience working with children, she strongly believes in differentiating instruction according to an individual’s learning needs and supporting their learning style. Adapting to a curriculum and creating strategies to better process information is one of her strengths. She incorporates unique ways for students to learn by tapping into the visual and kinesthetic components of a lesson and having the children learn in an experiential and hands-on way.

Charlotte Harary-Shechtman received a dual Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education and Special Education from CUNY Brooklyn College. She went on to achieve her Master’s degree in Childhood Special Education from Bank Street College of Education and graduated in 2019 while also obtaining her professional license.

For the past 10 years, Charlotte has been working with children of all ages. Over time, she worked in summer day camp, a variety of public and private schools as well as one to one tutoring. She worked as an assistant teacher in a classroom of three year olds for two years at Bean Sprouts Preschool in Park Slope. Most recently, Charlotte taught at The Shefa School, a school for students with language based learning challenges. During her time there, she worked with students ranging from 1st to 5th grade. She led a homeroom class of 13 students teaching lessons related to Social Emotional Learning, Judaic Studies, and writing while simultaneously teaching her own reading and math groups. Additionally, she worked with a team to develop curricula and modify lessons to ensure her students received the instruction that best suited their needs. Charlotte has worked with many evidence-based practices including Writing Revolution (formerly known as the Hochman method), PAF (Preventing Academic Failure), an Orton-Gillingham based program, Jump Math and Marilyn Zecher’s Multisensory Math & More program. Helping students learn how to set goals for one’s self, plan, prioritize, organize and multitask, are some skills Charlotte brings to the table in conjunction with her adaptation to lessons.

When she isn’t engaged in the education world, Charlotte enjoys spending her time with family, friends and being active. Exercising, playing tennis, and being outdoors, are some of her favorites. Charlotte is a lifelong learner who continues to educate herself on developing, preparing and instructing individualized curricula for students with learning differences.

Laura Yumi Snell

July 14, 2021

A graduate of Harvard University and UC Davis, Laura Yumi Snell has two decades of experience teaching and motivating students of all ages to help them achieve their goals. Growing up bilingual, Laura attended schools both in the US and in Japan, and she draws on her diverse educational background to hand-pick the best pedagogical methods that align with each student’s learning needs.

Laura teaches English, Japanese, writing, math, and ACT/SAT prep as a private tutor, in classrooms, and in corporate settings. Her students have attended top private and public schools in the prestigious NYC school system, and most have been accepted into the universities of their choice, including Ivy League schools and elite international institutions. She’s especially proud of her students with learning challenges who worked extra hard to get into their dream schools.

Simultaneously passionate and patient, Laura offers her students a creative, innovative approach to learning that guides them to think for themselves, giving them the skills and confidence they need to excel in all subjects. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes both the discipline required for learning something new and the importance of finding joy and excitement throughout the process. If a student can make a game out of studying, they’re much more likely to make it a healthy lifelong habit!

Before she was a tutor, Laura Yumi Snell had an artistic career as a classical pianist, performing and competing around the world from a very young age. She learned how to balance schoolwork, rehearsals, and extracurriculars by the time she was in middle school, all while managing performance anxiety. Students find her relaxation, mindfulness, and focus-building exercises to be extremely effective as they prepare for standardized tests and college admissions. As a master scheduler, Laura helps students develop organizational skills that they can implement throughout their lives.

Laura Yumi Snell holds a Master’s degree in Acting from Harvard University (with a research abroad certificate from the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia) and Bachelor’s degrees in Music and Dramatic Arts from UC Davis, where she was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Golden Key honor societies. Laura received a full scholarship thanks to her zest for learning that yielded high standardized test scores (perfect scores on SAT Math, SAT II Writing & Japanese), her passion for the arts and community engagement, and her hard-earned International Baccalaureate diploma. She also took coursework in pre-veterinary medicine and worked as a veterinary technician for two years.

When Laura isn’t teaching, she’s usually acting on screen/stage and producing theatre through SoHo Shakespeare Company. She also loves doting on her rescue dog Diamond, writing silly screenplays, and baking chewy snickerdoodles (which she usually shares with her students). An avid traveler, her dream is to visit all seven continents and to become a polyglot along the way.

Mary Shaw

April 5, 2021

At Binghamton University, Mary Shaw studied the development of formal education around the world. Still fascinated about how education is understood within a culture, she joined Teach for America in 1992 and began teaching Spanish, K-5 in rural North Carolina. After leaving North Carolina, she was motivated to learn more. At Bank Street College, Mary was introduced to progressive education, a way of seeing and teaching the whole child through hands-on interactive exploration and social learning. Throughout her years of teaching she discovered children learn best when immersed in meaningful activities and discussion.

In each setting, Mary Shaw developed classroom community through rich immersion in literacy. Reading and writing are necessary tools for life. A love for reading is a gift a child discovers and shares with everyone who will listen. For some children it is a challenge to make sense of words on a page. In 2012, she received her Master’s in Special Education at Hunter College to better understand the learning challenges that some children have in literacy and math learning. Mary strongly believes that her job is to stimulate children’s minds. She invites children to learn about the world around them through inquiry, research and problem solving by using their developing literacy and math skills.

As a general education and special education teacher for 13 years, Mary Shaw collaborated with co-teachers to develop accommodations for all students across the content areas. She developed teaching strategies for ENL (English as a New Language) students while immersing them in the larger curriculum. Mary taught phonics and reading programs such as Wilson Fundations, Words Their Way, and Teachers College Reading and Writing Workshop. She used a constructivist philosophy to build math programs. Mary invited children to learn about the world around them through inquiry, research and problem solving. They studied the life cycle of the plant and its importance in the world. The children investigated the question- what would happen if there were no plants? They then embarked on a yearlong study from farmers markets to cooking, seeds, bulbs, pollination and the life cycle of butterflies. As a pre-k teacher for three years, Mary supported hands-on, student-directed, experiential learning to encourage children to explore the world around them. She differentiated instruction to meet the needs of English language learners.

Mary Shaw also taught at the Northside Center for Child Development in Manhattan, where she implemented one-on-one, interactive reading instruction for first through fourth grade students with severe learning disabilities.

During the summers of 2000-2006 Mary was a graduate assistant at The Tiorati Environmental Workshop. She assisted the professor in teaching summer graduate courses in environmental studies (Bank Street College) and learned to apply inquiry-based learning to classroom settings.

In 2012, Mary was the recipient of the Merle E. Frampton Certificate for Excellence and Outstanding Performance in Special Education Teaching and Community Service from Hunter College.

Michael Kandel

March 29, 2021

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.

Amy Mitchell

Charlotte Harary-Shechtman

Laura Yumi Snell

Mary Shaw

Michael Kandel

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