I think education should be a two-way street. The best way to educate a student is to understand what his or her goals are and find a way to get there. My goal is to help my students in ways they find interesting and world-broadening.

Find out more about the student: what are his or her goals? Why is he looking for a tutor? What does she struggle with? What does he do well? I would then most likely observe the student as he or she works with some material. This way I can get a handle on how a student attacks a certain piece of work, and we can work on finding a more effective method.

I think it is important to help students build a skill set to help figure things out on their own. Showing students different ways to figure out what things mean through word analysis can be helpful. Giving students ideas on reliable sources to find information on the internet is increasingly more important in today's world.

As a wrestling coach, I am well versed in the power of motivation. It is important to celebrate success and growth, even when the end result is not quite where we want it to be yet. By telling students what they do well and giving specific goals to focus on for next time, everyone will be able to make incremental improvements until we reach our ultimate goal.

It depends on the subject or test, degree of difficulty, and student goals. My first option would of course be to explain the concept or skill in as many ways as possible, giving examples or parallels to things the student might recognize. However, if a student really just does not understand something and it is not an absolutely essential component, we may focus more on strengthening other areas to cover that particular weakness on the test or in the class.

This is one of the most difficult things to teach. The answer is simple, but it isn't easy: the best thing to do is for the student is to read as much as possible whenever possible. You can't get stronger if you don't lift weights, you can't get faster if you never run, and you can't become a better reader if you don't read. However, I have also used many strategies with struggling readers that have helped as well: having students write short summaries of the main idea next to each paragraph works well. Highlighting key words and phrases can help. Asking students about the motivations of the characters within a piece can help them understand why things might be happening. There are many activities that help, and we would work through as many of them as we could to get the student where he or she needs to be.

Observing how the student works is absolutely the most important part. Seeing what his strengths and weaknesses are and coming up with a plan of attack on how to boost the strengths and minimize the weaknesses is the best way to get him to improve upon current performance.

It might depend somewhat on the subject and the nature of the struggles. If a student just doesn't want to read or is not good at it, finding high interest material is a relatively simple solution. A student struggling with test prep or a more closed-nature kind of problem can be more difficult. I think the best solution is to first find out what the student's goals are: for example, if a child wants to go to a great college, he will need good SAT scores. Helping him understand that the pain is temporary and a necessary evil of getting over that barrier to admission can be quite helpful.

The best way to make sure a student understands something is to have the student explain it, preferably to someone who doesn't know much about the subject. If someone can teach another person a concept, then he truly knows that concept well.

Celebrating successes and measuring growth against a starting point.

A twofold approach: first, by asking what the student feels his or her needs are. Second, by observing how a student works and what kind of product the work leads to.

By communicating with the student and parents to make sure that the student's needs are being understood and met. If a student has different goals or doesn't feel satisfied with what we are doing, then I need to find a way to make sure that need is being met.

It depends on the subject and the student. High interest reading material, released practice questions, and assignments from a teacher, or activities of my own creation are all available and ready to be used at any time.