Dr. Amy Corbin was the first tutor I hired at Russell Tutoring and Consulting in 2017, only a month after I had formed my LLC. I’m not even sure how she had found my tiny company of one person on the internet, but she ferreted me out, and she told me my educational philosophy resonated with hers. Amy had been horrified that other tutoring companies were willing to hire her to tutor the entire SAT despite the fact that she knew she didn’t know the math; she found a home tutoring Writing at RTC, which is her gift and her strength. Amy explains: “Writing has brought me joy ever since I can remember, and I love helping students learn more about themselves as thinkers through their writing, whether academic or personal.”

Amy has two decades of teaching experience. She has a PhD from UC Berkeley, and she is an Associate Professor of Film Studies and Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College. She is heavily involved in the Writing Program at Muhlenberg, a nationally-recognized program that spans the disciplines at the College and trains peer tutors. As a tutor herself, Amy is sensitive, intuitive, and responsive – all qualities essential when you are working with a student on something as personal as writing.

Before I started RTC, one of the things I learned working at a big tutoring company is that tutors can be isolated and left without resources; we are very different at RTC. We understand that teachers work best when they work collaboratively, and we provide our tutors with a lot of resources. Amy coordinates our Writing Program at RTC, serving as a resource for our Writing tutors. Our tutors will reach a point working on an essay with a student where they would like a second set of eyes, and Amy is that touchstone. We have also recorded Amy tutoring writing in order to mentor other tutors. Amy is a touchstone for me as well; I have been tutoring writing for as long as Amy has, and I learn from her every day.

As a tutor, Amy has a particular gift for meeting a student at their starting place and drawing out their authentic voice. I often assign her to students who need a kind touch. She reports: “Working with different kinds of writers brings different kinds of satisfaction. With high school students who are confident in their writing, it’s really exciting to see them take their writing to the next level, learning to balance broad statements with vivid examples and teaching them how to edit their own writing. For students who don’t know how to start writing, we often talk first and when I take notes on what they say, I show them that they do have ideas even if they didn’t think so, and then we can work on shaping those verbal comments into formal writing.”

Amy especially loves working with students on the College Application Essay process. She finds it incredibly rewarding to transform a time that is so full of pressure and expectations into an experience that produces a great essay while also increasing students’ confidence in their own writing before they go to college. Amy observes, “Writing a college application essay can feel really intimidating, but I always tell students, ‘You don’t have to have saved the world or overcome a major illness to show college admissions staff what is unique about you. Sometimes amazing essays come from events that might sound minor, but if you can explain how an experience has shaped you into the person you are today, you’ve got a powerful piece of writing that will stand out in a pile of applications.’”

One very memorable college application essay that came out of Amy’s tutoring was by a young woman with intense social anxiety. In their first tutoring session, she shared her experiences choreographing a dance solo as well as working at a donut shop over the summer. On the surface, these two experiences couldn’t have seemed more different, but Amy helped the student see how they represented milestones in her personal development, and the end result was a truly inspiring and reflective essay.

Amy is just one of the amazing writing tutors that understands how to bring the best out of our students, and she has helped students craft extraordinary essays that have helped them gain admissions to schools as diverse as Millersville University and the University of Chicago. One of the hazards of my job is that our tutors deliver final College Application Essays to me in the late summer and early fall that regularly make me cry; I know we’ve done our job when I say to myself, “This kid. I feel like I know this kid, and I would want this kid at my school.”

Amy has delivered more of those essays than I can count, and I am so proud she is a member of our team.