about Justin Hillyard

A little about my career in education.

My career as a teacher began in 2005 when I started working as a private math and test prep tutor in my home state of New Jersey. After graduating from Boston College earlier that year, I continued my studies by pursuing a Master's Degree in Teaching from Montclair State University (ultimately completing the program in 2010). Initially the plan was to become a high school history teacher, but in the process of tutoring my students -- mostly for the math that is assessed on the SAT and ACT exams -- I decided to take a different path and completed the necessary coursework and testing to attain certification as a high school mathematics teacher. Along the way my travels have brought me to Colorado and Minnesota where I called Boulder and Minneapolis home for three years and one year, respectively. Fast-forwarding to the present, I now have four years of experience as a full-time high school math teacher and have been successfully preparing my private tutoring students for standardized admissions exams for more than fifteen years. This includes a proven track record of developing my students' conceptual skills, strategic proficiency, and test-taking confidence for exams as varied as the SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, SSAT, ISEE, SHSAT, NY Regents, Accuplacer, ASVAB, and GED. My wife, Jessica, and I now reside in Cold Spring, New York.

A look at my teaching philosophy.

One of the most heartbreaking aspects of being a math teacher is how consistently you hear from students that in their experience mathematics has mostly inspired hate, fear, and confusion. This is truly unfortunate and completely avoidable since, when properly taught and learned, math possesses an elegance and practicality that should draw its audience in rather than scaring it away.

Unfortunately, math is too often taught as a long list of rules and procedures to memorize in a step-by-step manner. In the typical math classroom, students frequently learn gimmicks that more closely resemble magic and voodoo than actual math. To make things worse, many of these approaches are entirely misleading or only true for a limited set of circumstances, thereby outliving their usefulness as students progress to more advanced math and leaving them feeling baffled and betrayed.  Not only does this interfere with genuine understanding of mathematical concepts, but it also artificially tilts the scale in favor of those for whom memorization is a strength. Yet as a Calculus professor of mine once told our class: "Anything you can memorize, you can also forget -- and if you have to memorize how to solve a math problem, it's usually an indication that you don't fully understand what's going on." This also causes frustration and anxiety among those students who sincerely yearn to grasp the "why" of math and not just the "how." In some cases, these frustrated and anxious students buy into the myth that they're just not a "math person." 

My primary remedy for this is to teach mathematics in an intuitive and conceptual manner -- in such a way, my students can make sense of how the puzzle pieces fit together. I aim to help my students unlearn some of these harmful techniques and instead get to the mathematical heart of the matter. From my perspective, just as there is more to being a cook than simply following a recipe, there is also more to being a mathematician than simply adhering to a procedural set of rules and carrying out a series of calculations. Mathematics is, as Galileo once described it, the language of the universe; that language can be learned -- and learned well -- by anyone.

In my free time...

I often go on hikes and bike rides (both road and mountain) and like to spend time with my three dogs (a Jack Russell named Bowser, a Boxer named Steven, and a French Bulldog named Gizmo). I also enjoy playing the drums, listening to music, attending concerts, playing/watching ice hockey, cooking, beekeeping, and gardening (especially if it involves growing heirloom tomatoes). A few long-term hobby-related goals of mine are to visit every National Park in the country, to bike across the United States on the Trans-America Trail from Virginia to Oregon, and to hike the Appalachian Trail. One of my favorite outdoor/athletic experiences was completing the 2013 Buffalo Bicycle Classic, a 110-mile road bike ride in the Boulder, Colorado area with approximately 6,200 feet of total climbing and a maximum elevation of 9,400 feet.