Teaching

Hood Learning Partners, LLC

Chicago, IL — hoodtutoring.com

Founded a private math and science tutoring practice built entirely through family referrals—zero paid advertising. Scaled to full-time income in summer 2025. Many students meet twice a week across multiple school years.

Specializations

• CPS Selective Enrollment / HSAT preparation (Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2)
• SAT/ACT preparation
• Catholic high school entrance exams
• Application guidance—school selection strategy, personal statement editing, and application review
• University-level math curriculum adapted for middle school students: symbolic logic, discrete mathematics, linear algebra, set theory, and CS theory fundamentals
• Introductory programming

Provides differentiated instruction aligned to in-school curriculum, HSAT learning objectives, and student goals, adapting through ongoing assessment.

Chinese Mutual Aid Association

Chicago, IL

Provided math and English test-prep instruction through a nonprofit primarily serving the local pan-Asian immigrant community, many from working-class backgrounds. Taught HSAT and ACT/SAT preparation for small groups of 8th-grade and high school students using culturally responsive teaching practices, including ESL students from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Delivered small-group and one-on-one instruction across a wide range of skill levels and learning profiles.

The University of Texas at Austin

Austin, TX

• Teaching Assistant for BCH 329F (Biochemistry for Majors)—held office hours and led exam review sessions
• Peer Tutor at the Sanger Learning Center for university-level calculus, statistics, and introductory analysis

Converting a Grade Calculator from Python to C

A scaffolded cross-linguistic translation exercise where the student re-implements a working Python program in C. Teaches low-level computing concepts—memory as a physical resource, types as instructions for reading bytes, data vs. interpretation—through the concrete act of preserving behavior while changing representation.

• Teaches the machine, not the syntax—explains why a char exists at the hardware level, that %d and %c read the same byte differently because you gave different instructions
• Every C concept introduced alongside its Python equivalent with a side-by-side translation table
• Scaffolded /* YOUR CODE HERE */ blocks require the student to reason through the logic
• Concepts deferred honestly—the & in scanf is flagged as beyond scope, never hand-waved

Programming Logic Gates: Python to C

The student rebuilds logic gates (AND, OR, NOT, XOR, NAND, NOR, XNOR) they already wrote in Python using C’s symbolic operators. The lesson bridges the gap between English-like Python keywords (and, or, not) and C’s symbolic equivalents (&&, ||, !), teaching that the same logical operations live underneath both syntaxes.

• Builds from known to unknown—the student already wrote these gates in Python, now re-expresses them in a more constrained formal system
• Introduces header files, type declarations, printf format specifiers, and main() through the concrete task of making gates work
• XOR is derived from AND, OR, and NOT before introducing the ^ shorthand—understanding precedes convenience
• Bonus challenge: build a full truth table printer, applying printf skills to generate all four input combinations

Saying It With Symbols: Quantifiers & First-Order Logic

A 10-page worksheet introducing first-order logic to a middle school student. Covers set membership (ℕ, ℤ, ℚ, ℝ), the universal quantifier (∀), the existential quantifier (∃), the unique existential (∃!), and multi-variable statements with combined quantifiers. The student translates between English and symbolic notation in both directions.

• Five-part progression: number sets and membership → universal quantifier → existential quantifier → unique existential → combining quantifiers with multiple variables
• Counterexample reasoning throughout—the student must disprove false “for all” statements by finding a single counterexample
• Exercises require the student to recognize how the choice of set changes truth value—the same equation can be ∃! over ℕ but ∃ over ℤ
• Challenge problems include multi-variable translations and recognizing which variable is “for all” vs. “there exists”