Today we’d like to introduce you to Cliff Chafin.
Hi Cliff, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I was in physics grad school in 2012 when I met my future wife in Carrboro and was doing and early job search. Most of my peers were getting stuck in software jobs or as terribly paid adjuncts. I always loved working with kids and, actually, tutored my first high school boy in math and Chemistry in Chapel hill in 1996. Periodically I would tutor friends kids and was a very popular TA in graduate school.
The job search was very slow and didn’t want to leave the area so I put up a flyer and found I had a full time job! Sadly the local schools had been in a state of steady decline for the last decade or so, so the demand was high. People always heard how great Chapel Hill schools were and I remember the really were! Faculty there were like college professors and the books were the best I’d seen. I even saw a fairly recent result on pivots I had never seen before in one of them. Now, the books were being replaced with online work and disorganized handouts that the teachers had to find for themselves online. Common core methods were new and strange enough that parents could often not help. I met a lot of kids in coffee shops where they were surrounded by college students and the vibe really helped them feel more serious about their work. Some of the ones who were injured or chronically ill I met at home during the day. Since 2012 I have had two of my own kids and we homeschool one of them so I work a lot in that community as well.
I struggle to understand what happened to the schools and why there is so much demand for extra help. At the core of it, I believe is that NC has raised teacher pay rarely and not by much so it has slipped far below the national average. The local district adds a little extra but nowhere near enough to make up for the extra cost of living here. There is also a lot of political activism in the schools which has, probably unintentionally, taken the focus off of excellence in education. Many parents here are highly educated, often foreign, and reached where they are because of their excellence in mathematics. Many of my clients are Indian, Chinese and (I can’t even count how many) Romanians. I also have online students preparing for competitions from as far away as Taiwan and South Korea.
My background was as a kid from a small town in Maine where I had to teach myself almost everything but I had a great library (precursor the the internet) a few mile walk from home. I won the state science fair and thought I was off on a great start in life and won a full scholarship to Middlebury College in VT. Unfortunately, I was struck down for many years with a chronic illness and, later, Lyme disease. Gratefully, I gradually regained my health and have a special sympathy for those who have been knocked down and are climbing back up. For many years I worked nights at the National AIDS Hotline talking to people suffering and dying from AIDS. Also I was a mentor in Chapel Hill for the National Teen AIDS Hotline where local kids counseled other teens nationally about being safe and sorting their way to good choices.
Physics is still my passion. I am writing and working on projects that I still aim to publish. Not sure I want to go back to academia. I knew some great people and got to learn General Relativity from one of the greats but also witnessed abuse and was bullied to commit academic fraud and then suffered retaliation when I refused. That world is changing a lot but I still strive to learn new math and physics every day and work on theory and inventions I hope to publish, produce and share with others to share in the really wonderful world of knowledge and discovery we live in.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I have always identified more with artists and philosphers than scientists. I did graduate research in granular materials and, later, quantum gases and their hydrodynamics. My interests are mostly in hydrodynamics and quantum mechanics with a special interest in the cases where the standard mathematical approaches don’t work.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I fear that schools are going to get even worse so demand will grow. Maybe we can get the right to work in school libraries to provide more service.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.chapelhillmathtutor.com
