Information About Jason - Kinsealy-Drinan tutor

Personal Description:

My name is Jason. I have just finished my degree in theoretical physics in Trinity. I will be going on to do a masters and then hopefully a PhD specialising in high energy theory.

I have always loved maths and I want to make the subject less intimidating to people. I firmly believe that there are very few people who are actually bad at maths, there's just a lot of lazy or bad teachers. That has been my experience of the education system anyway.

Tutoring Experience:

I have been giving maths grinds since my first year in college, both at home and in Dublin. I volunteered for two years with the Voluntary Tuition Programme, a society in Trinity which organises free grinds for secondary school students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I have also given private grinds in my home county of Waterford.

On top of that I have been part of the Theoretical Physics Student Association in Trinity where I was involved as a teacher in help rooms for students in the years below me. I have also been a teacher in the maths help rooms organised by the School of Maths in Trinity where I would help students from all disciplines, from social sciences to engineering, with any problems they were having.

Approach to Grinds:

The main thing I want to do is to build confidence with maths. In my experience, most people who struggle with maths do so because maths builds on itself. They run into something they don't understand and this topic is not explained to them properly. When a teacher moves on from this the student is left behind and begins to struggle more and more. For this reason I try to identify what areas students are weak in and fill in any gaps. At the same time I understand that I have to be real and help them do well in any upcoming exams and so, I work on covering weaknesses while also covering the topics they are currently on.

I also like to show students the reason that something in maths is the way it is. I find that this makes maths less confusing and helps students to identify patterns and apply their knowledge to problems. At the end of the day this is what maths is about.