Coming Soon!

Welcome! I’m still working on this site to make sure I have plenty to share with you.

Can’t wait to meet you!

Who am I?

Who am I?   My name is Christine Tunstall. I have worked as a Speech Pathologist and an Educational Psychologist for over 40 years.  Now I am retired and hoping to share with you what I’ve learned!

My History

Ever since my second year of college, I have been fascinated (and a bit obsessed!) with the brain. It formed my interest in Speech/Language Pathology. I worked for many years in medical rehabilitation with people who had suffered various injuries to the brain.  Later I was invited to create a brain injury program at a local community college, focused on cognitive skills and more. Students had goals of beginning college classes (usually remedial), employment, return to work, or do volunteer work.

While there, I began to assist other students who had various disabilities, mostly to acquire strategies for learning algebra. I worked with them much like I had done therapy with my patients/students who had suffered brain injuries: coax the learning of algebraic processes out of them through strategies and adaptive cueing, not repeatedly show them how something was done. 

I decided to earn a second Master’s degree, this one in Educational Psychology. I focused nearly all of each quarter’s final paper (25 – 30 pages!) on an aspect of learning math: assessing cognitive aptitude for algebra, adult learners of algebra, social cognition in math, vicarious learning in math, inductive/deductive reasoning in algebra, and so forth.

In time, I developed a course about using strategies to learn algebra. Students took my class while also taking an algebra class (or geometry, trigonometry or statistics), so they were always applying the strategies to their current homework. Strategies focused on learning about themselves, and using techniques to assist their understanding, analyzing, organizing and memorizing algebra processes.  

I did several presentations on my work: learning styles in math, memory and organizational strategies for algebra, and even making algebra accessible through learning strategies. As I approached retirement, I received many requests from attendees and my students that I write a book about my approach and techniques.  Because part of my retirement involved becoming a caregiver for my husband, I was spending much of my time at home – exacerbated by California’s COVID quarantine – so writing was a reasonable use of my time.

After spending two years writing about my work, I submitted it to just a couple of publishers and then set it aside Part of the complexity was that it needed to incorporate color (an important assistance for visual learners) and I wanted users to be able to easily photocopy pages without breaking the binding. I debated other means of publishing. Ultimately I decided I would let the material percolate in my brain for a while and share some of the ideas in a blog format.

So here I am!  I hope to share information that will be helpful for many of you. I also hope to learn more about your interests and needs as they relate to learning!