Gabriel K - Tutors - Keystone Tutors

• 11+, 13+, 16+ Literacy and English
• GCSE, A Level, and IB English
• AS/A Level and IB Philosophy
• Oxbridge Preparation: PPE, HSPS, English, Philosophy,
• School Entrance Interview Technique
• Undergraduate & Graduate English and Creative Writing

I have been an educator since graduating from Calvin University in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. My first position was in Seoul, South Korea where I taught ESL and also worked as a private tutor, mostly with students 8-13 years of age. After the first year of my MFA, I began teaching Distinguished Living Writers, in which my students read, studied, and met the authors of contemporary works of literature. These guests included Pulitzer, Booker, and National Book Award winning novelists, poets, journalists, and memoirists. I was eventually promoted to supervise this course, training other teachers, while also designing and then teaching a second course under the aegis of the Arts Across the Curriculum grant. Titled 'Explorations in the Arts,’ my class visited museums, attended operas, symphonies, and dramatic performances, while also meeting artists and practitioners around New York City. As a City University of New York college, the students I taught were amongst the most diverse in the city, including many first generation immigrants for whom English was a second language, but also high achieving students who had come from some of New York’s finest high schools. In these courses, the academic focus was on verbal and written expression, both in assignments and in classroom participation. I taught this course every semester and most summer terms for 8 years, including online sections at the onset of the pandemic. During this time I also resumed private tutoring with Reilly Education, focusing primarily on 13+ and Sixth Form entry preparation. Recent tutees have been successful applicants for Winchester, Sevenoaks, and Wellington. In addition, I’ve undertaken mentorship of students preparing applications for HSPS at Cambridge and PPE at Oxford. I found this work very rewarding, as it was an opportunity to challenge and shape the thinking of students on the verge of a new chapter of growth in their intellectual lives.

My career as an educator began in Seoul where I taught and tutored English as Second Language. This gave me a passion for teaching students in their early development, from 9 years old and into secondary school. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a student mature and achieve their potentional. Following my time in Seoul, I moved to New York City where I received a Masters of Fine Art in writing from Hunter College and was hired to teach the Distinguished Living Writers course (DLW) in which my students read fiction, poetry, and other texts by contemporary writers such as Margaret Atwood, Colm Tóibín, and Salman Rushdie (among many others) before meeting and discussing their work in the classroom. Most of my students were first year college students (17 or 18 years old), spoke English as a second language, and had recently arrived from South East Asia, the Middle East, and South America. Tailoring my lessons to the various needs of these students taught me to work productively with a wide variety of learning styles as I helped these students transition into their new environment. I soon became the supervisor of this course and was offered the opportunity to develop another called Explorations in the Arts. In this course I sought to make contemporary art relevant through reading philosophical, political, and historical texts that illuminated the underlying significance of whatever work we were experiencing, whether it be visual art, opera, drama, or dance. During this time I was also helping to found and run a non-profit library and publisher of poetry, critical, and philosophical texts. In 2018 I was awarded a Fellowship at the Fines Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where I finished my debut collection of poems Acid Virga (now published by Archway Editions). Since that time I have turned my focus to tutoring and writing, with hopes of finishing my debut novel this year.

I think encouragement, confidence-building, and even pleasure are often the keys to both retention and instilling a life-long pursuit of learning. I'm a writer and understand that clear communication and critical thinking are key to any student’s education, not to mention their future career paths. My aim is to sharpen these skills in my students and to build capacity for comprehension, textual analysis, and time-management to ensure academic achievement and excellence. I have nearly over a decade's experience designing curricula that fortify written and spoken literacy across a wide variety of age groups and skill levels, including 11+, 13+, GCSE or A Levels. My decade as an educator in New York City has made me adept at generating stimulating conversations with students to sharpen their criticality and creativity, which empowers students in the classroom as well as in the interview and entrance process to independent schools and universities. Above all I seek to design a rigorous yet pleasurable learning environment in line with my students’ interests and passions because I believe this leads to lifelong learning and growth. To this end, my tutoring sessions incorporate a dynamic range of writing exercises, pop quizzes, deep reading challenges, creative writing ''icebreakers'', and vocabulary fortification schemes. As a generalist in the Humanities, I am passionate about self-education, exploration, and making connections across diverse fields.

I read and I write and I row. To give you an idea of my reading list at present, I am in the midst of Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (my mother and I are doing a book club). I am also making my way through essays the Selected Work of Edward Said. As for my writing, I am hard at work on a novel, have recently finished a draft of a screenplay, and continue to write poetry as well as essays. I am also a part of a coastal rowing team and compete in races throughout the spring and summer.