Ruth: Hempstead tutor
Certified Tutor
I am a Jersey native and recent graduate of Rutgers University with a BS in Public Health. In college, I tutored middle school students in math and language arts at New Brunswick Middle School. I became very familiar with each student's learning style and leveraged their own strengths to maximize their learning curve and encourage academic development. Informally, I have also taught my fellow peers advanced math concepts they were struggling with in intermediate-level college math. Since graduation, I traveled to Thailand to take part in an ongoing public health project and taught English to elementary school children and health care workers. Although I am well adept in a variety of subject areas, Math and English are my two strong suits. There is no singular right way to learn, and there are as many strategies as there are people in the world. Therefore, as a tutor, my own personal hallmark lies in empowering students to actively use innovative learning methods to grasp even the most challenging of concepts.
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Undergraduate Degree: Rutgers University-New Brunswick - Bachelors, Public Health
Traveling (road trips), running, doing yoga, songwriting, reading self development books, and watching documentaries.
- Algebra
- Algebra 2
- Elementary School
- Elementary School Math
- Math
- Medicine
- Middle School
- Middle School Math
- Other
- Pre-Algebra
- Public Health
What is your teaching philosophy?
All students can learn and become empowered when they are accepted for who and where they are in their educational journey.
What might you do in a typical first session with a student?
I will set aside a few minutes to build rapport with my tutee (ask about life at school, hobbies, interests) and will also share with them some interesting things about me. I find it important to establish a level of comfortability between my tutee and I. For the subject at hand, I would have our first conversation be very general, pertaining to their problem areas and where they are comfortable. This will help identify concepts to go over.
How can you help a student become an independent learner?
We may work through a set of specific problems together. However, I would quickly digress to discuss context and methodology. My main priority for the tutoring sessions isn't to get tonight's assignment done. My primary goal is to orient my students towards underlying concepts and the process involved. These foster independence, which is my ultimate responsibility.
How would you help a student stay motivated?
It is very helpful to apply challenging concepts to a practical scenario to make sense of the conceptual framework and guide the process of solving problems. Fine-tuning the challenge also proves to be beneficial. I believe we are more motivated to learn when any task is matched to our level of skill: have the tutee work at the edge of their own ability, and then gradually increase the level of difficulty as they improve.
If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?
I would identify where the lack of understanding lies and determine whether we simply need to review or take a fresh approach to the concept to be learned. Sometimes, you just have to go back to basics. I would also have the tutee analyze the challenge (concept or specific problem) in keywords; it can be vital to relate the challenge in the student's own terms which they can better understand.