Layla

Certified Tutor

Teaching has always come naturally to me and seems to have always been a part of my life in some capacity or another my sister once joked that because I would tell her about what I learned in class at school with so much detail and enthusiasm, she ended up knowing the entire curriculum for her middle school science classes before she ever took them! I continued to volunteer tutor through high school, did two years of paid tutoring while studying English Literature as an undergrad at Harvard College, and then spent a year in Japan teaching English as a second language to students ranging in age from 4 to 80 years old (!).


One of the greatest joys of tutoring in particular, for me, is the ways in which I can personalize the lessons in order to help a student access the material on their own terms, in ways that make sense to them. I'm a strong believer in the idea that if you can find ways to relate to a subject and make it meaningful to you, working hard to get better at it can be a fulfilling, even fun undertaking, rather than a chore. One of the reasons I love tutoring English in particular is that while so many students struggle with the idea of organizing their thoughts on paper, or unpacking someone else's (sometimes very complicated!) word choices, if they have proper support, they can eventually come to think of written language as another medium for communicating to, and being heard by, the world around them.

When not thinking about language, essays, and vocab words, I can usually be found reading, listening to showtunes, practicing my Persian and Japanese, and singing.

I mostly tutor English, essay-writing, and standardized test prep, but let me know if there are other areas in the humanities you would like to work on!