and click here to see what Students have to say.

Deborah has completely transformed our daughter’s self image as a student in the year that she has tutored her. After nearly two years of tears and anxiety over math homework and clear evidence that our daughter struggled conceptually with math, we found Deborah and have been amazed at the rapid turn-around in our child’s math skills, her self-concept and her attitude. Deborah is the only teacher who has been able to measurably and fundamentally change our daughter’s math experience. Her approach seems to bypass all the confusion and emotion that used to clutter our daughter’s thoughts and helps her to really understand and calmly move through material that stymied her in school. We are so thrilled and thankful for Deborah’s unique and effective approach. Our daughter looks forward to her lessons and skips all the way from the car to Deborah’s office door!

                                                                                                     ~ Megan Penhoe

Deb Brunelle is the teacher you always hope to find for your child. She has that wonderful combination of clear thinking, innovative learning tools and lots and lots of patience. She somehow can translate the complexities of Algebra into language and symbols that, for the first time, have demystified math for our son. And she is helping him with strategies that have reduced the number of careless errors that have plagued his math testing. We cannot recommend Deb highly enough.        

~ Joan Ryan and Barry Tompkins

Deb has been a lifesaver. My daughter was having difficulties understanding the basic concepts in math. Deb, with her concrete methods, has enabled my daughter to grasp these concepts and she is now working confidently at grade level. I can’t recommend Deb enough.

Jill Kantola
Tiburon, CA

 

It is a great pleasure to recommend Deborah Brunelle as a Making Math Real tutor. We first met Deb during 2005 MMR summer camp and were delighted when she agreed to take charge of our 6th grade daughter. Deb has been working with Anu for more than nine months and it’s been a very fruitful relationship. Anu looks forward to her Wednesday lessons with Deb and thanks to Deb’s efforts and MMR way of teaching; Anu has made great progress in her understanding of the subject. Best of all she has gained a lot of self-confidence and is no longer scared of tackling new problems, even in other subject areas.

After observing the ‘magic’ of Making Math Real first hand with two of my daughters, I am convinced that every child should be taught math in this way. I can confidently say that Deb is a really skilled teacher. She is a very organized and methodical person with a cheerful personality. Best of all she seems to enjoy working with children. Even though we are relocating out of Bay Area, we plan to continue Anu’s MMR tutoring by Deb via video-conferencing.

Thanks, Deb for taking such good care of our daughter and very best.

Dr. Anil K. Joshi
Associate Research Scientist
Children’s Hospital Research Institute
Oakland, CA 94609

 

Deborah Brunelle is a wonderfully gifted teacher. She makes learning math fun and easy. She ensures her students experience math success over and over and this helps builds their self confidence, love of the subject, and willingness to take on new math challenges. Our daughter used to struggle with math and dreaded math class. Now math is her favorite subject, she looks forward to every math class, and happily brags that she has become a “math geek”. We have seen dramatic results in our daughter’s progress in math since working with Deb, and are grateful to her for all that she has done. Our daughter’s new found success and belief in her own abilities has opened up a whole new world to her.
~ Susan MacKay

 

Finding a tutor to work with my son on his writing skills was a daunting task! First of all, he wasn’t keen on the idea in the slightest. Secondly, he was compromised in all the different elements of the writing process – thinking, organization, elaboration, translation from mind to paper, and motivation. Deb tackled each of these problems in systematic
and creative ways. Her warmth, encouragement, and appreciation of my son with his individual quirks allowed for the development of a rich and caring bond. Her teaching skills contained humor, discipline, and originality. She dedicated herself to the task not only of how to write, but how to have fun writing. By the end of the year my son’s writing skills were considerably advanced as measured by his willingness, ease and competence as well as by standardized testing scores. Deborah Brunelle is a find!

Warm regards,
Abby