Monster Education

About Monster Education

As a life-long learner who spent decades at think tanks and consultancies, traveling the world to lecture at leading universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, LSE, University of Pennsylvania and others, navigating the first few months of the Covid lockdown was highly challenging. In the brief span of a few months, I went from an international affairs expert and author of academic books published with Harvard and Yale university presses, to a “homeschool” mom of two young kids.



Yet, my passion for learning and a perspective on different education systems had been a key thread of my life since childhood.

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My own education from primary school to my PhD took place across multiple continents and countries (the United States, Lithuania, France, England, and Switzerland). Similarly, during their early school years, my own kids had already moved a number of times from the West coast to the East coast to the Gulf coast and back West. As a family we had learned from their best educational experiences, different types of schools (public, parochial, private, progressive, and traditional) and the teachers we encountered. By the time of Covid quarantine, we were already used to ongoing online classes with exceptional teachers we did not want to part ways with when we moved.

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When schools went virtual in the spring of 2020, like many we were struggling with the large and chaotic video classes. Besides the immediate challenges, the experience also made me rethink much deeper the education my children were receiving even at a leading private school. For my kids, I wanted much more personalized instruction recalling my Master's and Doctoral studies at the University of Oxford. There I benefited from one-to-one tutorials and small-group teaching style considered unique to the historic Oxford and Cambridge universities in England.

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I sought to create not only a highly personalized but also social and interactive education, which I came to appreciate when I moved to Los Angeles at the age of ten from Lithuania. While surprisingly being much further ahead academically than my new classmates probably due to rigorous drill-learning I had received, I loved the positive-feedback and group-learning in American schools. I know it deepened my lifelong love for learning. Similarly during my undergraduate years at Columbia University, I came to love how the College's core curriculum was taught in very small seminars that prompted discussion between the students and the professor.



Monster Education is a product of my lifelong academic journey. That is why we have no more than 6 students per class - small enough for personalized attention but still large enough to be interactive. Having studied with extraordinary professors and lectured at leading universities, I put a lot of stock in teachers who I personally handpick for Monster Education looking for inspired and inspiring individuals. Fortunately, technology makes it possible for an exceptional teacher to teach your child in your living room regardless of where you live or your child's school.