MEET OUR TEAM

Johanna

English / Spanish

Johanna is a licensed NYC teacher and has more than 6 years of teaching and tutoring experience with students from K-12, in all subject areas. Her NYS certifications are in Social Studies 7-12 and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages K-12 (TESOL). She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Studies 7-12 and minored in Political Science which provides her with optimal proficiency in Economics, Civics/Government, U.S. History, and World History. Her Masters of Science in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) has also equipped her with the essential skills needed to teach effective reading comprehension, writing, and grammar in the English language. She is also fluent in Spanish, which is a great foreign language for your child, given the demand that it has in various workplaces. In 2018 she was the recipient of the Ellen Sherman Memorial Award (Outstanding Social Studies Teaching Recognition). She strives to combine her experiences with her ability to be a caring, passionate, and knowledgeable educator who will make a positive impact on your child’s academic growth and success.

Mrs. Troy

ELA Teacher

Mrs. Troy, a licensed NY state elementary school teacher. She fosters solid multitasking, time management, and communication skills combined with unwavering devotion to student success. Familiar with different instructional approaches such as explicit, direct, and Socratic. She has designed lessons on social studies and writing assignments such as persuasive essays and informational texts for students using various teaching methods and modern classroom technologies.

Alexandra

ELA / Writing Teacher

Miss Alexandra has over five years of experience teaching children and adults, both face-to-face and online, in areas such as business communication, ESL, the US government, and English writing. Her diverse teaching background has spanned multiple countries, cultures, and languages. In addition to teaching, Miss Alexandra has worked in Seoul, South Korea for an online fashion retailer and has worked with her local government to help pass educational funding legislation. She has earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Philadelphia University. Additionally, she has spent five months in China exploring culture, language, and history while earning her undergraduate degree. In her free time, Miss Alexandra enjoys ballet, painting, learning new languages, and volunteering with animals. She loves helping students strengthen their skills to prepare them for their future goals!

Mrs. Adam

Speech / Debate / Writing Teacher

As an educator, public speaking and debate coach, and communication scholar, Mrs. Adam has multiple areas of public speaking and debate expertise. Mrs. Adam began her public speaking and debate journey in 8th grade when she joined her first competitive public speaking and debate team. Since then, she competed in every possible local, the regional and national tournament with the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) in high school and the American Forensics Association (AFA) in college. As a debate and public speaking coach, Mrs. Adam has experience coaching the events of Public Forum, Policy Debate, Lincoln-Douglas, Congress, Original Oratory, Persuasive and Informative Speaking, Impromptu Speaking, Extemp Speaking, and Dramatic Interpretation. She coached public speaking and debate for four years at the university’s communication center where she pursued research in treating public speaking anxiety among young adults with virtual reality therapy. Her research was presented at the national communication centers conference in 2018, has been implemented by universities across the United States and continues to influence her teaching pedagogy. When Mrs. Adam is not teaching or coaching she spends her time judging national tournaments upon request for major universities on the east coast. Mrs. Adam has a degree in Communications Studies and writing, rhetoric, and persuasion from James Madison University.

Mark

English Teacher

Mark has experience teaching across the spectrum of age and skill level, and in a variety of settings, from large-class lectures to one-on-one mentoring. While he lived in China, he taught at a top-five ranked language university. Teaching about 200 students, he lectured five times a week on business and economic issues, American culture, and the English language. Also in China, he taught a small class of 8-year-olds weekly and tutored individuals of all ages, from young children to adult professionals. After returning to America, he continued to pursue his passion, teaching young children through an online English-teaching platform based in Beijing for the past five years. Mark holds a bachelor's degree in business management from Brigham Young University and a master's degree in theological studies from Houston Baptist University.

Paul

Enligsh Teacher / Shakespeare

Paul has his Master’s in English from Youngstown State University. A portion of this degree was gained when he was awarded a National Humanities Endowment grant for his work with the teaching of Shakespeare. With this grant he had the opportunity to study the teaching of Shakespeare at the Folger Shakespeare Institute in conjunction with Georgetown University in Washington D.C.
After that experience, Paul taught workshops on the teaching of Shakespeare to other teachers throughout Ohio. Through the Hudson Consortium, Paul also taught Shakespeare classes through the Virtual Academy to students from around the world.
Paul uses a unique blend of analyzing the text as well as the variety of choices that actors make and how those choices impact meaning/interpretation.

Mr. Henderson

English Teacher

Mr. Henderson has his B.S. in Secondary English Education from Kent State University and his M.A. in English from Youngstown State University. In addition to his two degrees, he has an additional 30 credit hours in educational technology from Kent State University.
Mr. Henderson has been teaching in a public high school in Ohio for 27 years. Over this time he has been teaching Junior and Senior college preparatory English classes. The focus of most of these courses has been on research writing and literature. The literature courses cover a wide array of time periods and cultures. Mr. Henderson’s specialty is the teaching of Shakespeare.
Over the past 4 years, Mr. Henderson has also been teaching at Kent State University. Some of the courses he has been teaching at the university level are College Writing I and II, Intro to Shakespeare, Great Books I and II, and Major Modern Writers.

Mrs. O'Hearn-Amman, Ph.D

SAT / AP English Instructor

Mrs. O'Hearn-Amman, Ph.D., is a graduate of the University of Virginia and specializes in SAT Verbal preparation. She is a former director and teacher for the SAT Preparation Outreach Program for Purdue University. She works as an online teacher to help students achieve high SAT scores and better English reading comprehension, grammar, vocabulary, and formal essay writing. She is currently an online teacher and rater for College Board (SAT Verbal Exam and English AP Exam).

Vivian

ELA/Writing Instructor

Vivian is an English teacher with experience at the primary, secondary, and college levels. She has taught essay-writing, grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Vivian received both her BA in English and her MAT from Mary Baldwin University. Her love of the English language comes from years of writing and reading, including working on a personal collection of stories about her Cambodian culture. She has been published in several literary magazines including The Shanghai Literary Review and an anthology about Asian-American experiences. She hopes to encourage students to both compose and discover beautiful stories while understanding the creativity and uniqueness of their words.

Mr. Espinoza

Chemistry, AP Chemistry, IB Chemistry

Mr. Espinoza graduated from college in December 2015. From August 2015 through June 2020, I taught AP Chemistry and Chemistry at a public high school in Indiana. With my help, students consistently scored at and above U.S. and global averages on the AP Chemistry exam.

In June 2017, Mr. Espinoza began writing AP Chemistry test questions on Albert.io. These are specifically aligned to the topics and learning objectives, and have rationales for why the correct answer is correct, and why each incorrect choice is incorrect. Since Mr. Espinoza was constantly looking at the Curriculum and Exam Description (CED), this job has made him extremely familiar with the content that is on the AP Chemistry exam, and how questions are typically asked by the College Board. Mr. Espinoza has also written content for the NY Regents Chemistry exam with this company.

Mr. Espinoza began tutoring online in March 2020, and has found that the online-format has many benefits for students; it’s quick and easy to share reference sheets, examples, and an on-screen calculator to allow for explanations to be super clear. Mr. Espinoza has mostly tutored students in AP Chemistry, IB Chemistry, and General Chemistry 1&2 (in college).

Mr. Espinoza takes the approach of discussing immediate goals with a student, and is able to look at their teacher’s materials and very quickly provide more examples and practice from his own resources or off the top of his head. He helps students to show their work for quantitative questions in a way that helps them to establish a routine, and is focused on identifying patterns in calculations. With qualitative questions, students often struggle with intermolecular forces and periodic trends. Mr. Espinoza also helps students, again, to identify patterns, memorize the small pieces of information that must be memorized, and to apply repetitive rationale to a wide array of problem types. Mr. Espinoza can help with non-calculator math skills for multiple choice, and free response strategies as well.

Outside of tutoring, Mr. Espinoza enjoys time with his wife and their dog, playing guitar and piano, video games, and chess. He cooks a pretty delicious cast-iron steak.

Currently, Mr. Espinoza is writing curriculum content for AP Chemistry and O-level chemistry for different companies, and tutoring Chemistry at various levels - AP, IB, General Chemistry 1&2 in college, ACE, and O-level.

Mr. David.

ELA / Writing Instructor

David is a 17-year veteran teacher at both the secondary and college level, where he has taught reading, creative writing, composition writing, and journalism. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism Degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from National University, and a Virginia State teaching License from Radford University. David has worked in daily and weekly newspapers for more than 30 years, was part-owner and publisher of the Franklin County Times, a weekly local newspaper, and has been the faculty advisor for both high school and college newspapers. David has published a novel, a textbook on composition, and numerous short stories and poetry. He has also been a professional touring musician and has an extensive library of original music he has written and published over the years.

Jacob

ELA / Writing Instructor

Jacob is a graduate of the University at Buffalo with a Master of Arts in English Literature. He has years of experience teaching and co-teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade English while aspiring to be an English professor.Beside writing, he is working on a novel right now. Jacob not only have strength and interests in English, he also has a minor in Mathematics. Jacob is a believer in using multiple strategies to learn and improve student capabilities in a number of ways. He consistently helps students grow academically with his years of experience.