Online English Tutor Matthew

Letter of Reference for Dr. Matthew Evans-Cockle

To whom it may concern,

I studied with Dr. Matthew Evans Cockle for 5 years, in grades 8 to 12 while attending Prince of Wales Secondary in Vancouver.
During this time, under Matthew’s guidance, I studied the Classics, including Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid, Euripides, a variety of Ancient Greek poets like Sappho, and other major works of antiquity. Matthew was able to structure this multi-year exploration of the Classics by first introducing me to easier introductory works, such as Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson, which motivated my further independent readings of works by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Through these initial works, not only did my English improve significantly, I also grew to increasingly understand the foundations on which much of Western literature had been cultivated.
Over the course of years we also studied the books within the Old Testament, Renaissance thinkers like Erasmus, the beginnings of the modern novel through Spanish Picaresque stories, more contemporary authors like Celine, Dickens, Kafka, and many other works alongside supplementary texts. We have even explored major movements in film as a subject of study.
With Matthew’s, learning to understand the ideas within these works was a profoundly transformative experience. Through his instruction and mentorship, I grew to appreciate the complexity of thought in these great works while my own capacity for reasoning grew.
What once for me, in high school, was a singular interest in the biological fields bloomed into a more general interest in public health through my studies at Johns Hopkins University, a development influenced in no small part by my former lessons with Matthew. Having committed to a double major in Public Health and Molecular Cellular Biology, now in my senior year, I actively sought to take classes in the humanities outside of my major requirements. Though institutional classes never offered the great amount of depth that classes with Matthew offered, I was driven to continue to build an understanding of those authors we never yet had the chance to cover—Literature of the Middle Ages (Beowulf to Milton), for instance, and early literature from the Age of Enlightenment (Descartes, Kant, and more).
Matthew’s classes offered something that no class at school could have offered. It was as much a study of English as it was of cultures, and as much a study of literature as it was of reasoning. It was the foundation that allowed me to think about the world I live in with both a lens for criticism and for recognition of beauty. It marked both the start and encompassed a great margin of the process of my increasingly thoughtful and grounded engagement with society.
The insights that classes with Matthew provided have allowed me to critically frame my major life experiences thus far—whether as president and board member in various student groups at Johns Hopkins University, a volunteer at the Emergency Department, an administrative team member at the Baltimore City Health Department, a client and admin assistant at various Canadian Red Cross offices, a strategy intern for the Maryland Department of Emergency Management and Office of Resilience, a researcher working with stroke patients at the Johns Hopkins hospital or experimenting with mice the laboratory setting. The insights we’ve drawn from our lessons, the parallel between hermeneutic reasoning and the practice of diagnostic medicine, for example, influences even my most current pursuits as a pre-medical student.
What I have reaped from the seeds which these classes have planted and cultivated is not solely the success I have had in work and studies, from skills in reasoning, criticism, rhetoric, or sensitivity to language. What I have gained is also, ultimately, the gift of realizing learning as an end in itself comparable to success in career or in projects. These ideas that I have harvested will undoubtedly influence me, in my thoughts and actions, throughout my life.
For these reasons, I offer my strongest and most sincere endorsement of Dr. Matthew Evans Cockle. His teaching shaped not only my intellectual development but also the way I continue to approach learning, responsibility, and the world around me. I can say without hesitation that his influence has been lasting and foundational, and I am deeply grateful for the years of instruction and mentorship I received under his guidance.
Sincerely,
Victor

To whom it may concern:

Re Dr. Matthew Evans-Cockle

Matthew has asked me to supply him with a letter of reference based on our conversations about the content and methods of the Liberal Arts and on my inspection of his teaching service at Corpus Christ College over the academic terms during 2017-2018 and 2018. Let me introduce the context for our working relationship.

Corpus Christi College is a small Catholic Liberal Arts College housed in St. Mark’s College located in the NE corner of the campus of the University of British Columbia. Corpus is essentially a two-year transfer institution in which all courses are approved by the BC Transfer system. My principle role as Dean of Arts has been to identify and to strengthen our four pillars of the Liberal Arts tradition in English, history, Philosophy and Religion.

On campus Matthew taught our remedial program in English 099 and our English 110 “Introduction to Academic Reading, Thinking and Writing”. I quickly discovered the breadth of Matthew’s reading lists even for these introductory courses. When he discovered that he had three very different levels of students in English 099, I found that he changed his syllabus from a challenging text about Don Quixote to Howard Zinn’s trenchant and humorous People’s History of the United States. For the more competent students he found in English 110 he employed Homer’s Odyssey as the main text but he also demonstrated how some of Homer’s themes where taken up and reshaped in some of the plays of Euripides.

In conversations with Matthew I became aware of the breadth of his interests in the Liberal Arts. He has a doctorate in English where he examined the literary, cultural and religious roots of the poetry of Edmund Spenser and John Milton. Matthew certainly knows the period of Early Modern English Literature but he is also interested in and informed by a broad array of major contributors to world culture down through the ages. He can teach in translation the canon of Greek Literature such as Hesiod, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In fact he is thinking of studying Ionic and Attic Greek so that he can tach these tests in the original. Matthew is also familiar with the creative exegesis and theology of Origen and the Neo-Platonism of some Christian intellectuals who came later. Matthew is also aware of some of the highlights of religious and literary culture of China, India and the Muslim Middle East.

Matthew demonstrates a comprehensive approach to the broad objectives of a Liberal Education that we associate with people like Matthew Arnold, Erich Auerbach and Umberto Eco. I certainly recommend Matthew as a dedicated teacher and an engaged scholar with very broad and informed intellectual interests.

Paul C. Burns B.Litt., Ph.D.
Dean of Arts, Corpus Christi College. 14 January 2019

Student Reference

Matthew has been tutoring me in English, Classical, Renaissance, and Modernist literature for upwards of 12 years, all the way from my time in high-school to now, during my Master's degree in English literature at UBC. Throughout our extended time together, he has not only much improved my reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, but has also greatly inspired my love for books and learning as a whole.

Anyone looking for a patient, encouraging, and adaptable tutor will find Matthew to be of excellent help. He has a keen and precise eye for language and is amazingly well-read on a vast array of literary topics: it's quite difficult not to feel more interested and engaged in a text or topic when the one teaching you is so clearly passionate about it himself!

Matthew has no doubt had a great impact on my performance in formal academia, but I must especially thank him for broadening my literary horizons and introducing me to many great works that I would have never engaged with otherwise.

Among the many professors I've had throughout the years, Matthew truly stands out not just for his sheer depth of knowledge and unwavering support of his students, but for his determination to make learning both enjoyable and productive.

Katy