I have always loved learning, and have dedicated many years of my life to studenthood. My educational background testifies to countless hours in high school, undergraduate, and graduate classrooms, where I hung on the wise words of my instructors, fed from the intellectual energy of my peers, and stretched the boundaries of my critical and imaginative thinking. Even now, I take courses and attend conferences in the craft of writing, and stay up-to-date with trends in teaching practice, such as Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and grading for equity. Every suggestion I give to a client is grounded in traditional coursework, the expertise of leaders in the writing and teaching fields, and my belief that each student benefits from a blend of tenderness, appropriately individualized instruction, and firm, clear expectations. My students are continually teaching me as well, opening my eyes to which approaches lead most successfully to the boosting of skills and retention of information.

My first year of teaching, 2000-2001, threw me directly into the fire: four classes of teenage boys at a Catholic college preparatory school. The heat failed to deter me, however, and I stayed at St. John's Prep for 15 years. In 2015, feeling as though I could augment my knowledge of teaching pedagogy and push my own limits by giving coeducational public school teaching a try, I transitioned to the high-performing district of Wellesley, Massachusetts. Here, my new English department inspired me with inventive lesson plans, advice for differentiated instruction, and concrete methods for assessing student progress. From 2020-2021, I served as the sole English teacher for grades 9-12 in Wellesley High School's Remote Learning School, and spent nine months holding my students' attention over Zoom through online modes such as Google Classroom, breakout rooms, Padlets, Peardeck, and Kahoot. 

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To be closer to home and to my family in Lynnfield, MA, I now teach ninth-grade girls at Malden Catholic, a diverse, codivisional Catholic school in an urban community near Boston. My goal is to carry out the required curriculum of reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and SAT preparation, but also to challenge my students to execute the school's motto of plus ultra ("further beyond"). My students are accustomed to writing ten sentences instead of the requested minimum of six in response to homework prompts, leading class discussions on our short stories and novels, and asking provocative questions about the way the world works...or about how it doesn't.

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I have been regularly tutoring students one-on-one in addition to teaching full time for decades. In 2019, I launched Liz Mastrangelo Writing Coach in order to reach a wider audience, and continued assisting even more high schoolers, college and graduate students, and adults -- particularly adults for whom English is their second language -- with their writing projects and long-term proficiency goals. Though I love engaging in all of the services I provide, the fastest-growing component of my business has been college essay coaching.

The time that writing coaches devote to working with a client often spills beyond the borders of a one-hour Zoom or in-person meeting. Before a session with a student, I am most likely creating exercises or worksheets to prepare for that session, or popping into a shared document to supply written feedback on a draft that my student has been working on. I also welcome my students to text or email me in between our live meetings if they would like me to review a piece of writing, or if they have a question about writing in general. Like many writing coaches, I respond to requests for editing as quickly as possible, and frequently work in the final hours before a client's deadline, whether that deadline be for an English class, college application, cover letter and résumé, or court affidavit...and whether that deadline is at 8:00 in the morning or at midnight.

I would not have this process happen any other way! I have chosen a life in teaching, which means that a 9-to-5 workday does not apply. But my rates account for these unquantifiable smaller moments of attention that I am happy to give to my clients.

You might ask, "What is the difference between education, experience, and expertise?" Certainly, expertise evolves from a combination of the other two -- but the power of expertise is greater than the simple sum of education and experience. 

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I have not only been a student and high school English teacher for a long time, but I have also been an avid reader and writer for a long time. My love for language -- the satisfaction of selecting the perfect word to evoke an emotion or replay an experience, the aesthetic taste and sound of a word when one says it out loud, the lulling or commanding rhythm of a line when a writer considers the number of syllables in it -- propels me to lead a student to writing their most attractive prose. My expertise lies in my ear for pleasing and inviting writing versus stilted or cumbersome writing. Friends, family members, colleagues, and clients know me for my unyielding scrutiny of language choice, grammatical neatness, diversity of syntax structure, and stylistic flair. After all, the manner in which a writer constructs their sentences and builds their paragraphs can incite a reader's heart to flutter or their mind to stumble. A developing writer may not be in tune quite yet to the way they might place a two-word sentence next to a complex-compound one for dramatic effect, or where they might insert a speaker's tag in dialogue to summon suspense. When coaching a client in writing, I help them to elicit and capitalize on the beauty in their voice so that they can tell their most convincing and irresistible story.