Introducing Your Teacher
My name is Kelsey Phillip Payne. I'm a philosophy, math, and foreign language teacher as well as a private tutor. I graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College magna cum laude in 2006 with a BA in philosophy and additional minors in Japanese studies and religion.
As part of my philosophy degree, I was trained in critical thinking, analytical essay writing, and formal predicate logic and was further enriched by my school’s "Curriculum II" program for interdisciplinary academics, which was recently renamed the "Three Crowns Curriculum." My undergraduate thesis was on the speculative consequences of meme theory -- which sounds pretty silly today based on what most people think memes are but was once a much more serious topic regarding the evolution of culture and ideas. This thesis was presented by me to a panel at the Minnesota Students Society of Philosophy as a requirement for attaining an honors status to my major.
In addition to the requirement of my philosophy major, I also studied Zen Buddhism and Japanese language in a study abroad program at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. I even returned to Japan for a few more years after graduating here in the States to work as an ESL teacher in public schools under the Takamatsu Board of Education in Kagawa Prefecture, and after that, as the lead teacher and activities director for a small foreign language company in Mitoyo.
After teaching English as a second language for several years, I switched to private Japanese tutoring and teaching upon returning to the U.S. for a time, and along the way, I began rediscovering my deep fascination with philosophy, mathematics, and the sciences, their histories and their theories. Before long I was recommended by a fellow tutor to someone for math tutoring, and then later philosophy tutoring. Before I knew it, one student turned to many, in several different math, philosophy, and Japanese subjects, and it’s more or less what I’ve been doing ever since.
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