About the Instructor

Trish Van Buskirk, Director, Kumon Math and Reading Center of Colleyville

As an extensively trained and certified professional Kumon instructor, Trish serves as a mentor who guides your children through their work while also providing direction, support and encouragement. She creates an at-home study plan in addition to monitoring classroom assignments, and  emphasizes the importance of accurately completing each assignment within a designated time frame. This has helped many of her students increase self-confidence, thus becoming more self-reliant. Like all Kumon Instructors, Trish has a true passion for education and an earnest desire to help children succeed.

With a lifelong passion for learning and teaching, Trish has been working with students of all ages for over 45 years, starting with tutoring peers in math throughout high school and college. Trish completed her undergraduate degree in mathematics in 1980, then went on to study formal mathematical logic in graduate school. At 21 years of age, she had 2 original proofs published in the American Journal of Mathematics. One of her corollary proofs was adopted into the Calculus textbook used at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Trish also worked as an editor for McDougal Littell for several years, first revising and proofreading high school and middle school math textbooks, then having input into curriculum content as a senior editor.  While in graduate school, she co-taught a class with a Psychology professor on Math Anxiety, aimed at older students who were returning to school, but were intimidated by the required math courses. The class received the highest level of positive feedback each semester it was offered.

In the early 90's, with a baby on the way, Trish decided to study early childhood education. She earned 24 graduate level credits in education, mostly in the area of gifted education.

In 1998, Trish opened her first Kumon Math and Reading Center of Southlake, her home since 1994. She opened the Kumon Math and Reading Center of Colleyville in 2008.