Timothy LeViness

Biography

Born to a pair of philosophy professors who inspired my love of reading, learning, and teaching, I’ve spent my entire life thinking deeply about education. At the University of Alabama, I discovered a love of science education and communication while working as a TA, and pivoted from being an English major to Physics and Applied Mathematics. I immediately became the university’s walk-in physics tutor, took pedagogy classes, and I’ve been tutoring professionally ever since. After graduating, I worked as a research software engineer for physics projects ranging from Antarctica to Switzerland, while tutoring high school math and physics.

In 2018, I switched to tutoring test prep full time, found a passion for teaching the Verbal parts of the SAT and ACT as well, and helped hundreds of students in Princeton and Washington D.C. get into their dream colleges. Having completed my education with undiagnosed ADHD, I love to share with my students the tactics and techniques I developed to manage it in college.

My approach is friendly, conversational, and highly analytical, teaching not just the test material, but also interrogating the mindset and tactics behind the tests, and interrogating our own habits and approaches to learning. I strive to show students that confidence comes not from mastery, but from knowing any difficult concept CAN be mastered, if broken up into smaller, approachable steps. My favorite topics to teach are calculus and rhetorical analysis, where students first start to see how math and English get used in the real world, and where all the disparate things they’ve been learning start to connect and fall into place.

To me, math and science are more than just areas of study, they’re the lens through which the modern world views itself, and the more you learn, the deeper and richer your understanding of the universe becomes. Test scores aside, my mission is to show every student the awesome and exciting power mathematics gives us in understanding the world around us.

Outside of the classroom, you can usually find me in the kitchen, testing, developing and burning recipes. I also enjoy programming, modding video games, and growing peppers, some of which survive long enough to get turned into hot sauce.