I don’t do the writing.
We find the writer.
One-on-one writing tutoring and college essay coaching, grades 8–12. In my nineteenth year teaching writing and revision, every grade level from eighth through college.
For busy students, writing can turn from an opportunity to say something true into one more task to finish with maximum efficiency and minimum thought: assess the grader, identify the objective, generate a product, cross it off. I help students turn writing from performance back into practice: reading their own draft, seeing what it needs, and revising until they've written something they're proud of. The work is slow, difficult, and braver than it seems, and, when done with integrity, enormously rewarding. It starts with the writer who's already there.
Be wrong out loud.
Each session is a one-hour, one-on-one workshop. We start with what the student brings and what they think needs attention. Their diagnosis is sometimes wrong. That's still the right place to begin, because naming the problem is often the first act of revision.
Students can float an unfinished idea, ask a basic question, be wrong out loud, and get candid feedback without embarrassment. I'm not the person holding the gradebook, and that changes the dynamic: students can take risks, try something strange, and worry less about producing the answer they think they're supposed to give. Sessions aren't solemn. There is room to experiment, but also thoughtful pressure — the question that makes a student defend a choice, reconsider it, or discover something better.
Show me the sentence that made you think that.to an eighth grader
What's the strongest argument against your thesis?to a tenth grader
You say this essay is about your grandmother, but I think it's really about you. Can we explore that?to a senior
Students often become better writers when they stop trying to sound like good students. I make space for humor, oddness, disagreement, and risk, finding the sentence that feels honest, precise, surprising, or simply worth reading.
Writing is revision. Your student will learn to see what a draft is doing, decide what to cut and what to keep, and own the choice. No student writes to please me; they produce work they recognize as their own. The goal is the whole writer: one who reads closely, revises without being told, and whose writing catches up to their thinking. Every session ends with a clear next step.
If your student plans another session on the same essay, I send revision notes afterward: what we discussed, the next steps, and any work to complete before we meet again. When an essay is finished and the work is ending, your student receives revision notes and a brief closing note.
He encouraged me to write frankly and structure my work so that my own ideas became more apparent to myself and to the reader. The skills I developed with him continue to influence how I write in my professional and personal life today.
Mac T. · Marist School · Class of 2020
My experience
I'm in my nineteenth year of teaching, and I have taught every grade from eighth through first-year college. I know what each year asks of a writer because I have taught each one. I teach first-year college writing, the course every undergraduate takes, so I know which writing habits survive the crossing from high school and which don't.
I began at Woodberry Forest School in Virginia as the first Kenan-Lewis Fellow, teaching English and coaching wrestling, 2008–2009. From 2009 to 2024 I taught English at Marist School in Atlanta: eighth-grade composition, AP Language and Composition, world and American literature, and an interdisciplinary senior seminar in speculative fiction and physics. Since 2024 I have taught first-year writing at Georgia State University, where I'm pursuing a PhD in literary studies, have completed graduate coursework in literacy studies and composition pedagogy, and serve on the English department's AI pedagogy working group. In 2026 the Department of English recognized my work with its Graduate Writing Award.
I hold an M.A. in English from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and a B.A. in English from Washington and Lee University.
As Marist's head wrestling coach from 2009 to 2023, I led the team to a 301–106 record, coached nine individual state champions, and received the Frank Hagan Memorial Coach's Award. Coaching informs the habits I bring to writing instruction: close attention, honest feedback, and patience with the work of improvement.
He was my wrestling coach my junior and senior years, and has since become a lasting influence on how I think, learn, and communicate. We still spend hours talking about literature, philosophy, family, and personal growth. He invests deeply in people, and his encouragement has inspired me to read more and write more thoughtfully.
Connor C. · Marist School · Class of 2011
References and a current background check are available on request.
Tutoring and rates · 2026–27
Grades 11–12
$135 per hourAt this age, writing has deadlines, and I respect them. We work on the assignment in front of the student, whether it's the AP essay, the research paper, or the analysis due Monday. Underneath it, we build the analysis, style, and research-based argument that college writing demands. I taught AP Language and Composition for five years, and most of my week is now spent with college freshmen, three months out of high school. I tutor seniors toward the writers those classrooms expect.
My writing/literature class this semester — my professor also raved about my writing, just like the professor I had in the fall in the other English class. Still think it's funny bc I never thought of myself as a real proficient writer until these professors have brought it up.
A note from a former student in his first year at Rutgers · May 2020
Grades 8–10
$110 per hourThese are the years when arguments become more demanding, and when many students first decide they're "not a writer." That verdict is almost always premature. We work on a focused thesis, the paragraph that does one thing well, close reading, and the habit of revision, all built around current schoolwork. Where reading is the obstacle, we start there: comprehension, annotation, and the habit of noticing how a text makes its effects. For some students, the fear of being judged gets in the way of writing. Room to experiment, paired with clear expectations, helps them move forward.
His instructional style allowed creative freedom while enforcing the structure of a traditional essay. That early high school course prepared me for writing assignments in later years and gave me a strong foundation for expressing ideas with clarity.
Lillian T. · Marist School · Class of 2025
Tutoring meets weekly or biweekly, online or in person around metro Atlanta, in public or school-approved settings. Parents are always welcome. Sessions are paid in advance, and I ask for 24 hours' notice to reschedule. Full terms are in the engagement agreement every family signs before we begin.
What each year asks
These are broad expectations. Students develop at different rates, and our work begins with what each student needs.
Eighth grade
A clear idea, real evidence, and sentences the student controls — explaining how character, conflict, setting, and language develop a theme.
Ninth grade
The shift from what happens to why: a focused thesis, paragraphs that each develop a supporting claim, and quotations explained rather than dropped in.
Tenth grade
Ambiguity, symbolism, structure: sustaining one argument across a full essay, weighing sources, answering the other side, revising for precision.
Eleventh grade
Competing interpretations and the study of how writers persuade: arguments drawn from several sources and adapted to purpose and audience.
Twelfth grade
Independent reading of complex texts, sustained analysis and research, in a voice of their own, with real responsibility for revision.
College essay coaching
For most people, writing a personal statement is uncomfortable. For a seventeen-year-old, it's daunting and strange. They're asked to reveal something illuminating about who they are while they're still figuring that out, in 650 words, for a stranger, in an application to a place that may shape their future. Many students respond sensibly: they impersonate the applicant they think the stranger wants.
Finding the person behind the essay is the first half of the job. Making the essay — choosing what to include, what to leave out, and what order it goes in — is the second. An essay is finished when your student, through honest revision and hard work, has written something true about who they are.
One of the most valuable things I gained from Riddick was confidence in my own writing voice. During my senior year we focused on going beyond set essay structures and developing arguments that reflected my own opinions. I would highly recommend him to students looking to become more confident, independent writers.
Corey L. · Marist School · Class of 2019
College essay sessions
The single essay session
$225 · One hour · Includes advance reading of one essay draft
For students who already have a draft of the personal statement or a supplemental essay and want a second reader. This is a revision session, not a proofreading service. Send the draft and its prompt at least 48 hours before we meet, and I'll read it closely beforehand to get to know your student through their work.
In the session, we look at whether the essay sounds like the person who wrote it, where it loses the reader, and where revision can do the most good. I ask questions that help your student decide what to change and why. The revisions are theirs, and they leave with clear priorities for continuing the work.
If you then choose the package (described below), subject to availability and decided before a second session, this session counts as the first of six and the $225 applies toward the total.
The follow-up revision session
$135 · One hour
Good writing is the product of thoughtful revision, so I recommend a follow-up session once your student has revised. We read the new draft together. Your student explains what they changed and why, we test whether each change does what it was meant to, and we decide what, if anything, still needs work. Hearing a writer account for their own revisions is often the most useful hour of the process.
Advance reading is not included. A new essay, such as a supplemental, requires a full reading and is booked as a single essay session at $225. Follow-up session fees are not credited toward the six-session package.
Working on an essay we haven't seen together? You can book an hourly tutoring session instead and bring it with you. Come with specific goals, such as an opening that isn't working, a paragraph that won't hold together, or a conclusion that just summarizes, and we'll spend the hour on those. A tutoring session isn't a full read of the essay; for that, book the single essay session.
The college essay package
$1,200 · Six one-hour sessions
For students starting from scratch, or close to it. We start before the draft. In the early sessions, we talk, and your student writes short, rough pieces about things that actually happened to them. We look for the details and ideas that could become an essay. Sometimes we develop the topic they brought. Sometimes a better one emerges.
Then we draft and revise, and revise again. We focus on the Common App personal statement and agree at the first session which supplemental essays we can reasonably address within the six sessions. Together, we set a schedule around application deadlines, with writing and revision between meetings.
Your student writes every word. I ask questions that help them find the missing detail, question an easy conclusion, and decide what belongs.
Four seats each season, so that each student gets a reader who knows the draft rather than a place in a queue. When the seats are filled, I'll say so and suggest a time to try again.
Ground rules
Parents deserve clear expectations. These are the boundaries of my practice.
I won't write for your student.
I'll model a technique, ask questions, and explain how a sentence could work. The thinking and the words stay theirs.
I won't guarantee a grade, a score, or an admission.
I can promise careful preparation, candid feedback, and instruction aimed at stronger, more independent writing.
Students hear what parents hear.
The strengths, concerns, and next steps I discuss with you, I discuss with them.
AI is a conversation, not a search for contraband.
AI is already inside the tools students write with, so pretending otherwise teaches nothing. I teach how it can support learning and how it can undermine it: how to question a draft with it, test an argument, judge what it produces, and check its sources. Your student writes every word they submit, and a college essay never contains AI-written text. If I have a question about a draft, we look at it together, early and in the open. Families who would rather keep AI out of sessions can opt out; we use sample texts instead. Knowing when to use AI and when to refuse it is a writing skill, and I teach it.
Revision, not proofreading.
Revision needs time for a student to consider feedback and make changes. Proofreading can be part of that; it isn't a substitute for it, and I don't offer it as a stand-alone service.
Enrollment is limited.
Four essay students each application season, and tutoring as space allows. I take only as many students as I can know well.
Riddick originally helped me with my writing in high school, and has continued to provide instruction and feedback into my adult life. He's knowledgeable, patient, and great at explaining ideas in a clear, approachable way.
Matt A. · Marist School · Class of 2013 · Petty Officer Second Class, USN
Tell me about your writer.
What grade is your student in? What are they working on, and what would you like help with? Share anything else you'd like me to know before we meet.
I reply within two days and welcome new students as space allows. If we're a fit, I send a short engagement agreement and a link to book a time; payment confirms the session.
Or contact me directly at riddick@riddickbeebe.com or 404 502 7059.