Email: glowe@prepmatters.com
Garrett is a third generation Washingtonian (and absurdly proud of this) and attended St. Albans School and then St. Marks School in Massachusetts. He received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania (and was stroke of the varsity lightweight crew – another fact that he is inordinately proud of.) After earning a MA in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto, he became a field ornithologist and received a PhD in Biology from the University of Maryland. Like pretty much everyone else in this business, he fell into tutoring. Teaching labs at the University of Maryland and tutoring highschoolers when in grad school was great fun. Since then, that’s all he’s done. He has helped a wide variety of students to prepare for the SAT and ACT for 19 years. When not shepherding highschoolers through this vale of tears, Garrett is an indifferent barbequer, but is captivated by US history and is an avid genealogist currently focusing on those buried in Georgetown’s Mt. Zion Cemetery.
My Philosophy
Every student has strengths and weaknesses – areas to be celebrated and those to be better understood and fortified. My job is to discern what those are and to determine how to help each student approach the tests. Individuality aside, fundamental to all students is the need to understand how the tests work (what they measure and, as importantly, what they don’t measure); what those tests expect (frequently not what is expected in school!); what content must be known and what approaches used. This all comes from practice and focus, from students making mistakes and understanding why they made those mistakes and what to do differently next time. Of course, transcending or, at least, managing anxiety is also critical. So, too, is walking into tests, armed with the confidence that comes achievement on homework and practice tests.
However, test prep must fit into a student’s life along with academics, sports, theater, relaxation and general tomfoolery. Therefore, helping students schedule their time is useful as are giving clear assignments and encouraging short daily refreshers – what is the area of a circle vs. the circumference, the three uses of commas or the three types of systems of equations questions they will encounter, etc.
I endeavor to help each student approach their tests with preparation, confidence and to focus on their performance, not on the result, which ultimately is a distraction. Knowing you have to score a goal doesn’t really help you score that goal. My final goal is for students to walk away from this challenge content that he or she has done their best, is happy with their result and relieved to leave this very important, but somewhat ridiculous, rite of passage behind.