About – Jay Van Raalte Tutoring

Hi! I’m Jay. I started teaching in elementary school, where multi-grade Montessori classrooms encouraged me to help my classmates while learning myself. I started freelance tutoring in high school and continued to do so while studying math and geology at the College of Charleston. Now that I’ve graduated, I’m excited to reach even more students.

Credentials: 7+ years tutoring experience, B.S. in Mathematics (Pure Math) / Minor in Geology from the College of Charleston, National Merit Scholar, Member of Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Gamma Epsilon, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Recipient of the Ewa Wojcicka Award (“Jay also finds joy in mathematics and is able to convey that to students, which is what makes [them] such a good tutor. [Jay] was an obvious choice to be this year’s recipient.” -Alex Kasman.)

In 2021, I coauthored the paper “The Tyrant Lizard King, Queen and Emperor: Multiple Lines of Morphological and Stratigraphic Evidence Support Subtle Evolution and Probable Speciation Within the North American Genus Tyrannosaurus” with Gregory S. Paul and W. Scott Persons IV, which was published in Evolutionary Biology. The paper posits that the the current designation “T.rex” should really be broken into 3 separate species: T.rex, T. regina, and T.imperator. I did all the statistical analysis for the paper, which was both fun and challenging. It caused quite a stir in the scientific community! Read more about it here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944606

What I Teach: elementary through grad school Math (course-based and enrichment / exploration), Writing, Study Skills, Test Prep.