KS-Cubed STEM Tutoring

EXPERIENCED – PATIENT – KNOWLEDGABLE – AMICABLE – ADAPTABLE

This is NOT your ordinary tutor and his is NOT ordinary tutoring.

About the Lead Tutor:

Not your typical tutor...

Gary C. Booker has more than 10 years of relevant experience with youth and adults in six different countries. He is the founder of the African Space Science and Policy Institute, which exists to use promote space science in technology in Africa and the diaspora with the objectives of using space technology to eliminate poverty and mitigate environmental issues. He is an advocate of using airships and gliders as an alternative to rockets for providing affordable suborbital spaceflight experiences. He is the author of several books and news articles.

Philosophy...
Booker 's tutoring philosophy is based upon the idea that a tutor is much more than just someone who shows a student the proper way to solve a problem outside of the classroom. The tutor must help to inspire the student to be their best and to believe in themselves. Booker believes that anyone can learn anything with the right amount of effort and patience. Booker's tutoring strategy is student-specific and takes into account a student's individual needs.

Booker authored The Seven Laws of Successful Youth Work (2005) and made the following postulates for working with children:

Youth work Law One: Teaching Is Loving: Theoretical insight has taught teachers that somehow, they are able to suspend the emotions that affected many of their life’s important decisions from their choice of the right college, choice of a significant other, and the type of diet they should pick; then expect to emotionlessly pass off the most important thing a person could ever receive… an education… off onto a student. The student, in turn, is expected to emotionlessly engulf whatever the teacher shoves down his/her throat like a vacuum cleaner. It is amazing to see the similarities when one compares the setup of educational trends to robotics. In manufacturing plants, robots simply need commands and they perform their tasks, and nothing else. But children are human beings, not robots and children have emotional needs.
Youth work Law Two: You Don’t Know Everything: In your desire to aid your pupil, it is easy to insist that he/she learn something that you feel is very important. It could highly upset you if your pupil gives a rebuttal to your point with just as much passion as given when you attempt to convey it. This often brings out the Achilles heel of many well-meaning teachers, youth counselors, volunteers and paraprofessionals; ego often makes the youth worker want to chop the child down to size, putting him/her in their proper place as a student where they are supposed to shut up and engulf everything without feedback. Sometimes, the teacher can receive a great amount of edification and become a better teacher when they allow the roles to occasionally be reversed, making the role of the teacher the student. Not only can it provide the teacher/mentor with new information, it could also provide the teacher with insights on the student’s learning style. Showing the student that you are open to new insights creates more respect. It is when you force something down their throat in which they know you really don’t understand that causes angry sentiment.
Youth work Law Three: Understand and Teach the Difference between Knowledge and Information: Knowledge and information, although related, are two different things. Information includes facts on a subject. Knowledge is the ability to put the facts to use. Information can be memorized and forgotten with much more ease. However, Knowledge is a part of you. It changes your life.
Youth work Law Four: Ingenuity Is More Important than Resources: All resources are finite and no resource is constantly available. The skilled youth worker learns to take advantage of what is available and make the most of it. The youth worker that sits back and awaits miracles will miss out on the opportunity to create miracles. Using imagination allows one to make a lot with a little.
Youth Work Law Five: Youth Work Is Nation Building – Impart mentees with a sense of community consciousness: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, John Paul II, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony, Helen Keller and Rosa Parks were all children once. At some point of their childhood lies the lessons learned that turned them into adults that shaped history. The power of the youth worker is the most highly underestimated tool of shaping society. All people that work with young people should not only remember that they are shaping tomorrows society, but should teach and lead according to the society in which they feel needs to exist by providing the lessons needed to create it.
Youth Work Law Six: Progress must come in its due time: You cannot rush progress. The difference between a project done with care and a project done with haste can be compared to the difference between fast food and a home cooked meal. While the home cooked meal takes a longer time to prepare, the taste is better and has more nutrients. Therefore, you should not treat the deliverance of an education onto a pupil like a trip to a drive-thru window at a fast food restaurant. Lessons should be delivered according to the learning speed of the learner. Everything else should be secondary.
Youth Work Law Seven: Assist With Developing a Strong Sense of Goal Setting: If a child does not learn to set goals, they will not have ambition. It should be no surprise that a society that does not spend enough time intimately showing the youth how to set goals holistically in all aspects of their life will become adults who will do whatever it takes to get by or to achieve a thrill. Goal setting is very important, as it defines heroes/heroines, paths of study and ways of life and the effective youth worker will continuously work in reinforcing lessons in goal setting.

These rules also apply to adults, who also need educational assistance from a compassionate and capable tutor from time to time.

Experience...

Eight Years of Classroom Experience in middle and high school grades education, and GED Prep
Two-Time Americorps Alumni
Has taught students in Barbados, Bermuda, Kenya, Korea, the United States, and Trinidad
Experienced science, engineering and technology professional with the following companies
- Matrix Engineering Group, Inc. (Chamblee, GA)
- Corporate Environmental Risk Management, LLC (Decatur, GA)
- Surface Systems, Inc. (St. Louis, MO)
- Habitat for Humanity of Lee County (North Fort Myers, Florida)
- Georgia Pacific Resins, Inc. (Decatur, GA)