Private 1-on-1 coaching
We obsess over pushing
your child’s limits.
Six domains, measured against a written rubric. You will know whether it is working because the numbers will say so.
What gets measured
Six domains, scored zero to four.
“Good at math” is not a measurement. These are. I tell you how your child is improving biweekly with in-depth progress updates every four weeks. Your child is scored on each one at the baseline diagnostic and again at twelve weeks, against a written rubric.
Fluency
Executes grade-level procedures accurately, without excessive effort
Correctness on routine items
Conceptual understanding
Explains why a procedure works; represents an idea more than one way
Explain-it items, rubric
Problem representation
Turns an unfamiliar problem into something workable: a diagram, an equation, a table
Multi-step novel items, rubric
Strategy and persistence
Has moves when stuck; tries a second approach instead of stopping
Observed live
Reasoning communication
Explains their thinking so someone else can follow it
Long-answer items, rubric
Calibration
Whether their confidence actually matches their correctness
Confidence vs. correctness
Calibration is the one nobody else measures.
Your child tags their confidence on every problem before they see whether they got it right. A student who is certain on eight problems they got wrong does not have a knowledge gap. They cannot yet tell the difference between understanding something and recognizing it, which is fixable once it is visible.
Inside a session
Anchor and stretch.
Every session splits two ways. The grade stays protected, and the reasoning still gets built.
30–40%
Anchor
The unit their class is covering this week. Nothing gets missed while the deeper skill is being built.
60–70%
Stretch
Harder problems from that same topic, and other topics as necessary. If class is doing ratios, stretch is multi-step ratio reasoning.
Around assessments
I hold your child’s syllabus, unit calendar, and test dates from week one. Two weeks out from an assessment the split shifts toward Anchor and stays there until the test is done. Then it shifts back. It is written into the plan you receive.
What comes with it
Weekly 60-minute private sessions, live on Zoom
Daily problem sets under 15 minutes, deliberately spaced
Every problem confidence-tagged and scored in the portal
A written parent note every two weeks, a call every month
Same-day answers when your child is stuck between sessions
The plan re-cut every four weeks against fresh scores
Joshua Smith
Founder
Meet your coach
“The mind is a terrible thing to waste”
∼ Mom
Joshua began college at 14 and was in full-time engineering by 15. While coaching, he kept seeing very smart capable students unable to solve unfamiliar problems. Most instruction focuses on the steps to solve a specific problem, not the reasoning to solve any problem. He developed his own framework to solve problems in advanced math and engineering and teaches this to students: FGS (Find, Given, Solve) define what you’re trying to find, name what you’ve been given, then map the path between them. Every student learns to reach for that structure first, because it works when the problem changes shape and rote memorization fails.
Outside of coaching, Joshua is an undergraduate studying Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics who is obsessed with aerospace, storytelling, music, neuroscience, and more. He travels as much as he can, seeks out new food, and explores cities with the same curiosity he brings to a hard problem. His next trip is to Taiwan. Students tend to find him easy to talk to, and the work tends to feel less like tutoring than like thinking alongside someone who genuinely finds this stuff interesting.
How it starts
Four steps.
01
Book your review call
A short form about your student. Pick a time on the spot.
02
Your child takes the diagnostic
Asynchronous diagnostic completed before the review call.
03
We go through it together
On the review call, we discuss what showed up across the six domains, and what I would do about it.
04
You receive the Clarity Report
In writing, after the call. Gap analysis and your child's Mastery Blueprint.
Questions