Aaron Morgan

Biography

As machines now purport to do our learning for us, it is all the more important to build the foundational skills that allow for critical thought and intellectual curiosity to flourish. No matter the subject area or material, I try to approach every session and exercise with an eye to how it shapes a student into a confident and capacious learner.

If there’s anything I’ve learned as an student of Philosophy at the undergraduate (Pomona College) and graduate (University of Amsterdam) level, it’s that answering the Big Questions™ is just as much about paragraph, sentence, or even word-level writing and comprehension skills as it is about trying to somehow produce Big Answers™ out of thin air. It’s about working to understand, with rigor and care, what’s already been said—and then thinking hard about what ought to be said next and how.

For instance: when I came across Kierkegaard in undergrad, I would have never been able to grapple with his claim that “the self is a relation which relates itself to its own self” without being able to parse and digest the surrounding page. Whether or not a student views themselves as a future philosophy student, the same is true for all high-level thinking and problem solving. The ability to translate more basic skills in a given subject matter to advanced forms of reasoning and expression is what I take pride in cultivating as an educator.

Throughout the years, I’ve developed my love of teaching in various roles: as an English TA in high school, an assistant to the director of Menlo School’s Writing Center over my gap year, a department-nominated Philosophy Mentor at Pomona College, and an SAT, English, and History tutor during my Master’s. I’m excited to continue this work at AJ as a test prep and academic tutor, working with talented and ambitious students from my native Bay Area.

When I’m not reading, writing, or teaching (which isn’t often), you may be able to find me playing board games, listening to live music, and wandering around the many excellent Bay Area independent bookstores.