About » Kelsey Phillip Payne

"I just wanted to thank you so much for everything you have done for Megan. This has been a really hard topic for her, College Algebra, and she has tried hard and struggled hard with it. You have been absolutely awesome. Megan loves working with you. She said amidst her difficulty you always make her laugh. You give her such inspiration to keep trying and wishing her luck, giving her tips on how to be calm for her tests. You take a special interest in your students and that says a lot about you not only as a teacher/tutor, but as a person. You give her so much information on the subject and are willing to take the time to help her by reviewing her work as well. You have been really available when she needed one session after the next, several days in a row, getting ready for a big test. [...] Thank you so much. We will be calling upon you again."

"I wrote this right before I graduated high school. I am now a college freshman and just finished my first Calculus exam and received a 98%. Kelsey instilled onto me the love of math, the ability to not give up whenever the going gets tough, and to truly want to understand the material I am presented with. Anyone wondering if they should have Kelsey tutor them in anything, do it. He is a great person, fantastic teacher, and most of all, a friend. Best tutor I have ever had."
— David L., 2018 magnet high school student graduate

I've been a philosophy, math, and foreign language teacher, as well as private tutor, for over 15 years. I also have deep interests in data analysis, martial arts, acting, and gardening.

More recently, I have been writing several works (which are only now slowly coming to see the light of day) and engaging others on futurist topics pertaining to the rise of AI, the disjointedness of modern-day physics with rigorous philosophical inquiry, and the question of meaning in a quickly unfolding context of possible purposelessness. I'm also a certified LLM prompt engineer and operator.

My wife Jen, our son, and I are something of a little nomadic tribe. In the past few years, we've lived in the foothills near Denver, Colorado, in the countryside outside Nashville, Tennessee, and the outskirts of Shreveport, Louisiana. (A few years before that, you would have had to be in Kagawa or Osaka, Japan, to find me.)

"I love working with Kelsey because he seems to understand complex aspects of my personality, thought and emotions in a way that I rarely find in people. I’ve witnessed his ability to track deeply with other people and situations on multiple occasions, and I continue to be impressed. And to compliment his rich insight comes a wonderful playfulness and willingness to laugh. My interactions with him have been just a joy all around!"
— Cecelia B., Freelance Writer and NVC Practice Group Facilitator

I've been an educator in some way or other for most of my life. At the age of eight, my first focus of study was in paleontology. I remember learning how to use my computer's word processor to type a flyer that I distributed through the neighbors' mail boxes, advertising a class where I revealed my methods for breaking open gravel rocks from the driveway with a hammer to find shell fossils. (For whatever strange reason, nobody took me up on my free educational offer in this field.) Following that, I took a keen interest in electromagnetism, and by the sixth grade, was overjoyed to share with visual aids my enthrallment with genetic mutation and evolutionary theory.

In college, in addition to working as a reading tutor for elementary students, I helped students with predicate logic (a sort of mathematics of logic in the traditions of philosophy), and was on multiple occasions consulted by fellow students for guidance in modern philosophy. I worked hard to introduce a new (and at the time less popular) field of study concerning philosophy of mind to the department, specifically that of meme theory, long before it had grown to become a household word.

"Kelsey is one of the most phenomenal tutors that I have ever had. With a complex subject like philosophy, he had the ability to make the subject all seem simple. Kelsey is extremely adaptable and helped me learn in a way that best suited me. More than anything else, Kelsey cares about the work that he is doing. He is extremely prepared before each session, and provides detailed notes after. I have had a lot of tutors on Wyzant, but Kelsey supersedes them all."
- Nicolette (Highland Park, NJ)

"I can't thank Kelsey enough for these past couple of months. Kelsey has helped me pass college mathematics 115 this semester. He was very thorough in our lessons, as he broke down math concepts that were all a blur to me. Not only is he a highly intelligent individual, but he is also caring and understanding. He was very flexible with different scheduling times that accommodated my needs. Kelsey even developed some math tools such as spreadsheets to help with my homework every week. I highly recommend Kelsey for any students that are struggling with mathematics at all levels."
— Matthew V., airline pilot and adult student

Immediately after graduating college, I left for Japan (for the second time) to teach English for a couple of years in public schools, switching afterwards to Japanese tutoring upon returning to the U.S. Along the way, I began rediscovering my latent fascination with mathematics, its history and its theories, before finally, through recommendation by a fellow tutor, was introduced to my first algebra student. In less than six months, one student turned to many, in several different math and Japanese subjects.

Eventually, I tentatively explored offering philosophy courses to younger students, only to find that there was quite a demand for this subject, and one that didn't want the watered down version one commonly finds in most social media circles and popular websites. My hope has indeed been revived that there are younger generations among us willing to dive beneath the surface and think critically and creatively about everything, from science to society, and from art to engineering.

May no leaf be left unturned.