Michael Hollander

I was born and raised in San Francisco, attending Presidio Hill School. It was a small school, with sixteen kids in my grade and every student getting the attention they deserved. I appreciated my teachers’ creativity and compassion in how they designed their lessons. They made classes interactive to keep us all engaged, and they always worked alongside their students to keep them up to pace. 

I excelled in English, creative writing, and math, happily immersing myself in stories from The Iliad and The Odyssey and writing my own short stories and poetry. I attribute a large part of my success in math to my teacher whose lighthearted approach made everything from

the order of operations to the Pythagorean theorem funny and memorable. 

I went on to attend Lick Wilmerding High School and later graduated from San Francisco State with a bachelor’s degree in cinema. I focused on screenwriting, and I was able to apply my love of creative writing to film. 

Understanding the pivotal role that my teachers had in my success, I felt passionate about becoming an educator after I graduated. I worked as a counselor at my former elementary school, a “toyology” teacher for pre-k through 3rd grade (in which I taught science concepts through toy building projects), and a private tutor for all subjects from kindergarten through 8th grade.

In addition to the fulfillment I have received from helping kids succeed and enjoy the learning process, my experiences have helped me to understand the importance of promoting individualized learning techniques. Every student learns in their own way and at their own pace. My goal is to best understand the needs of each of my students, and find the teaching approach most conducive to their learning style. I develop my curriculum to meet my students’ needs as they progress, and implement new and creative lesson plans to keep them engaged.

When I’m not tutoring, I enjoy playing the guitar, which serves as an avenue of inspiration for my writing.