Haley: Laguna Niguel tutor

Certified Tutor

My official tutoring experience may have begun in college at California State University, Sacramento while pursuing my Bachelor of Arts Degree in English, but the truth is that I have always felt like an English tutor. Since High School I have always excelled in my Literature, English and Writing courses when it came to reading comprehension, literary analysis, essay writing and creative writing, which brought a lot of friends to my door for help with their writing. In college I was fortunate enough to be a part of Professor Dan Melzer's tutoring internship program at California State University, Sacramento for the University Reading and Writing Center (URWC) on campus. Within that semester I was taught multiple tutoring techniques and approaches for all kinds of learners and students while volunteering 5 extra hours of tutoring to the center every week. After my internship semester I was hired onto 2 other writing centers on campus: The Faculty Student Mentor Program (FSMP) and the Student Athlete Resource Center (SARC) where I tutored English, Communications, Writing, Essay Writing and some Public Speaking course material.

My strengths as a tutor comes from my comfortable nature and accessibility with my student writers. Since writing is an inherently personal endeavor, it is often difficult to really get student writers to open up and receive help on their writing. My student writers have always called me the "Question Master" because I am always using conversation and questions to take the pressure off of the pen to paper/fingers to keyboard process of writing where they tend to freeze up. I like to get to know my student writers so that they are comfortable enough to share their ideas with me and to unlock that great idea they all have in their minds waiting to be unleashed on the page. There are of course some great technical aspects and techniques that improve the overall tutoring experience but it has been myexperience that when a real connection is formed between two people through a collaborative conversation and a relaxed atmosphere, that is when a student can thrive in their writing.

Apart from my life as a student and tutor, I am also a writer and an editor. In 2013 my poetry was published in the Calaveras Station Literary Journal where I also became a poetry editor in 2014. I am also a retired, nationally ranked competitive dancer. My other hobbies include reading, fashion, watching football and photography.