Alex Gaither

Biography

Ever since my first job as a swim coach, I have enjoyed sharing knowledge of my passions. I knew that I enjoyed math since high school, where I took it upon myself to tutor several peers   in calculus because of my fondness for the subject. This love for math deepened during my time at UC Santa Barbara, from which I graduated with a B.S. in mathematics. During my time at UCSB, I graded for an introductory proof class, and I found it incredibly rewarding to give detailed feedback to students and watch them improve. So, after graduating, I knew immediately that I wanted to tutor mathematics.

I have always enjoyed building students’ intuitions for math and helping them to understand its inner workings. I love helping students to not only perform mathematics, but to be able to read it as a language. My time spent studying math at university enables me to do this and has allowed my previous students to be endlessly curious. I believe that key to building this kind of understanding is the relationship between the tutor and the student. The personalized individual tutoring at AJ tutoring is excellent for building students’ comfortability with tutors.

Teaching is rewarding to me because of this student teacher relationship. I have always enjoyed watching the moments where students grasp subtle bits of intuition, whether this be in the water with swimming or with math. It feels amazing to invest myself in students and watch them grow beyond what they thought possible.

Outside of tutoring, I give back to my local community by teaching people to swim and enjoy swimming myself. I also have a massive sweet tooth and can often be found baking some sort of pastry in my kitchen at home.