AP Physics Tutoring with Blake Jensen
AP Physics can be challenging because it demands accuracy across three things at once:
- physics concepts
- math/setup
- explaining your reasoning the way the test expects
Students often understand the lesson and still struggle—especially on free-response and lab-style questions—because they haven’t been taught how to translate their thinking into AP-grade answers.
Blake Jensen is an AP Physics tutor with 15+ years of experience. His tutoring is structured, efficient, and focused on the exact places students typically lose points.
About Blake
Meet Blake Jensen (AP Physics Tutor, 15+ Years)
Blake has spent more than 15 years tutoring physics and AP-level courses. He works with students who are capable, busy, and often frustrated because effort isn’t turning into consistent scores.
What you can expect from his style:
- Clear explanations, but not long speeches
- Step-by-step problem setup (so you can reproduce it on your own)
- Frequent checks for understanding (not just “did you follow along?”)
- Direct feedback on FRQ writing—what earns credit, what doesn’t, and why
- A plan that fits your class pacing and your test dates
If you want a tutor who keeps things calm and precise, Blake is a good fit.
What To Expect In A Tutoring Session
How AP Physics Tutoring Works
Tutoring is most effective when it’s built around what you’re doing right now in class and the kinds of questions you’re being graded on.
A typical cycle looks like this:
- We identify the pattern behind the mistakes.
Not “you missed #7.” The underlying cause: setting up forces incorrectly, losing track of signs and directions, mixing up energy and momentum, using a formula without checking assumptions, reading graphs too quickly, or skipping the step that links evidence to a claim. - We rebuild the skill with a small set of representative problems.
Enough repetition to make the method automatic, not so much that you waste time. - We move to AP-style questions.
Multiple choice is part of it, but free-response is where many students either surge or stall. Blake teaches you how to write what the rubric rewards. - We keep a running list of “known weak points.”
This stops the common cycle of “we fixed it once… and it came back three weeks later.”
Recommended frequency: 1 session/week during the year; increase in the month leading into the AP exam if you’re targeting a 4 or 5.
Who This Is For
Who Benefits from AP Physics Tutoring
This is for students who:
- do the homework but don’t get test results that match the effort
- understand topics in isolation but struggle to combine ideas on mixed-unit tests
- lose points on FRQs because the explanation is vague, incomplete, or off-target
- want a clear plan for the AP Physics exam instead of “review everything”
It’s also for strong students aiming high who want tighter execution and fewer avoidable errors.
Topics Covered
AP Physics Topics We Cover
Blake tutors AP Physics content across the topics students most commonly get stuck on, including:
- kinematics (including graphs and multi-step motion)
- Newton’s laws, free-body diagrams, friction, and inclined planes
- work, energy, and power (including when energy methods are the right tool)
- momentum and collisions (and how to choose conservation vs. forces/impulse)
- circular motion and gravitation
- rotation and torque (including common “why didn’t this work?” traps)
- simple harmonic motion and oscillations
- waves and sound
- electricity and circuits (conceptual + quantitative)
- electrostatics and fields; magnetism and induction (as applicable)
If your teacher uses a particular text, packet, or platform, tutoring can follow that so you’re not juggling two different “systems.”
The part that moves scores: FRQs and lab-style reasoning
Free-Response (FRQ) Coaching: Writing Answers That Earn Points
AP Physics is picky in a predictable way. Many students lose points because they:
- use the right principle but don’t apply it to the specific situation in the prompt
- mix up direction and sign (or never define a sign convention)
- skip the setup step (diagram, system definition, knowns/unknowns)
- do correct math but don’t interpret the result or connect it to the claim
- write a lot without actually answering what the question asked
Blake teaches a repeatable approach:
- identify what the question is actually asking (claim? calculation? justification?)
- anchor your reasoning to a principle (Newton’s laws, energy, momentum, fields, circuits, etc.)
- write one or two sentences that explicitly connect cause → effect (with units and direction when relevant)
This is not “write more.” It’s “write the sentence that scores.”
Lab and data questions are handled the same way: what the graph implies, what a control does, what evidence supports a claim, and what sources of error would push results up or down.
Online AP Physics Tutoring
Online AP Physics Tutoring
Online works well for AP Physics because you can share problems, annotate steps, and save clean notes.
Online sessions typically include:
- worked solutions you can keep
- targeted practice sets
- correction of setup and reasoning in real time
Blake also meets students in-person at his Carmel Valley office.
How To Get Started
Getting Started
To make the first session efficient, bring:
- your current unit/topic list
- your most recent test/quiz (or a set of problems you missed)
- any FRQs you’ve completed (even if they’re messy)
If you don’t have those, no problem—Blake can diagnose using a short set of representative questions.
FAQ
Do you tutor AP Physics students who are behind?
Yes. The priority is stabilizing near-term performance (next test), then filling gaps in a way that prevents the same confusion from repeating.
Can you help if my issue is mostly FRQs?
Yes. FRQ improvement is often the fastest way to raise scores because the mistakes are usually systematic and fixable.
Do you teach “test tricks”?
Not really. The focus is mastering the models and writing scorable reasoning. That’s what holds up under pressure.
Is this only for the AP exam, or also for class grades?
Both. Tutoring follows your class pacing while building toward AP-style questions.
What are your rates?
$350 / hour (package discounts are available).
AP Physics Tutor: Work with Blake Jensen
If you want AP Physics tutoring that’s structured, straightforward, and aimed at measurable improvement, Blake can help.