PrepNow Tutor - Lyra S.
After graduating cum laude with a BA in theater from Macalester College, Lyra took on a few odd jobs while she decided her path. Pretty quickly, she felt a desire to “make the world a kinder place,” and she decided that she could do this best through education. Thus, since 2012, Lyra has worked as a tutor across many areas of study and in many roles. In the math arena, for example, Lyra has worked with elementary-level to college-level students in the areas of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, pre-calculus, and calculus (including AP testing). In addition, she has touched on myriad other topics: writing and English; AP science (biology, chemistry, and physics); and first- and second-year Spanish. Also, she has experience in SAT and ACT test preparation. In building this breadth of experience, she has also been honored by being promoted to Lead Tutor at her most recent job and designated national tutor of the month in January 2023.
Lyra’s tutoring style is built upon the twin pillars of compassion and curiosity. She seeks to understand her students and is truly interested in fostering a mutual learning environment. Adapting to each student’s needs, she brings a breadth of approaches and thoughts to any topic. She says, “I typically lean on the psychological understanding of memory, which reports that recall strength and comprehension both improve exponentially as the number of ways of understanding a topic increases.” In addition, Lyra knows that rote memorization or recitation is one kind of skill but does not represent the goals of education or learning. She summarizes, “A student can be trained into repeating correct information on cue, but true success for student and teacher alike is measured by the student's internal sense of mastery, radiating outward.”
When not working, Lyra has always pursued a number of varied interests. As an undergraduate student she co-founded and presided over an organization that sought to destigmatize mental health concerns in the community. More recently, she completed writing her first urban fantasy novel, and her agent is in the process of shopping it to publishers. Finally, she has also been an active gamer since high school, and she still runs a community board game meet-up at her local games store.
