Jacob Ginsberg has worked for RTC since 2018, and he was the second tutor I hired. Jacob is one of the most naturally gifted teachers I have ever known. He taught me something about the ACT when I interviewed him, and considering that he’s half my age, that’s saying something! I hired him instantly, and every one of the over four dozen families I’ve matched him with has raved about him.

Jacob is remarkably versatile as a tutor: a Socratic, intuitive teacher, he explains even the most difficult concepts very simply and clearly in a way that any learner can understand; Jacob is a true polymath capable of working with a special needs learner on SAT Writing in one lesson, and an AP Calculus student in the next. 

Recently, Jacob translated his gift for teaching into revising our ACT and SAT curricula. Together, he and I thoroughly revised and updated our curricula to reflect everything we’ve been learning as we teach test prep, because we are always learning from our students and becoming better at our work. We had amazing help! Our Director of Student Services Erin Brenneman, herself a geologist, contributed to our ACT Science chapter. Tutor Cindy Mummert, a math teacher with decades of experience, helped us perfect our new Math curricula. I can’t tell you what a gift it is to have these people pour their smarts into our curricula. 

Test prep curriculum is often written by intellectuals with degrees who have never actually spent time teaching students how to take a test.  What that means is that tutors start teaching it and find it often doesn’t work for so many of their learners: it’s cookie-cutter and often impractical.

Before Jacob started revising our SAT Reading curriculum, he took test after test, trying out various test-taking strategies to see what worked best, and what just wouldn’t work for students. He knew how he’d been teaching SAT Reading, but he wanted to take SATs, trying every strategy he could find. Once he knew what worked best for test-takers, Jacob and I poured together through every word of the new curriculum he wrote, making sure it was exactly what would enable us to customize instruction so that our students could achieve.

We’ve been excited to see students succeed with the new curriculum chapters as we roll them out: this spring, one student saw an 11-point increase in ACT Science to a perfect 36 the first time she took the test, which amazed us at the time. Then, more students started jumping from the mid-20’s to the mid to high 30’s in Science – much higher gains than before – and we knew our curriculum was working. Jacob’s ingenuity is key to that, and as his students will tell you, he’s elemental to what makes RTC so special.

Jacob will continue tutoring many more students for RTC in the coming years and is also putting his MFA in Creative Writing to good use writing fiction.  We’re so excited to match him with more students!