To be patient, kind, interpersonal, compassionate, enthusiastic, determined, and focused on YOU.

Get to know you, find out your needs, and address how we can set up a learning strategy with fits YOU best.

By nurturing them, first of all. You must understand how they learn and what makes education come alive for them, and then nurture that. It is a tragedy to turn a student off of a lifetime of education.

Encouragement is always key. And, you need to know how much information is too much. Your brain literally will push out old information to accommodate more information if it's coming in too fast. When you're feeling a headache coming on, that's a strong indicator your brain is putting on the brakes.

I'd do whatever it took. I could keep breaking it down into the simplest concept I could, I could relate it to something in their culture, I could use a concrete or abstract example, I could use more and more homework type questions, and I would definitely keep asking along the way what part of the concept they are having a hard time with, and we would address it together step by step.

There are little hacks for comprehension. Languages are patterns. If you don't know part of the pattern, or one word, you can gather the meaning by context and make a guess as to what the missing pattern piece is after you've looked at the pattern as a whole message.

First of all, you need a good interpersonal dialogue. You need trust, and you need to assure the student that everyone begins somewhere and no questions are stupid. You can't be blamed nor shamed for what you don't know.

You relate it to something the student already likes. All things are interconnected. There will be overlaps in subjects. One thing a student may enjoy in one subject will always reappear in another subject. It will only have a different name.

When the student is able to repeat a part of the material-- for example, to begin to sound out part of a word-- then we know we are on our way. It does not matter how slow we progress, as long as we don't stop. When the student can repeat something, this is excellent, but the student must not just repeat it but explain it in his or her own way. Once that is done, I know they have grasped it.

Well, it's like anything else. You use empathy because we've all been beginners at some point, and you keep encouraging each step forward. It's normal to forget. Even after years of using German, I blank on words. I am a native English speaker, and I also often forget words and have to downgrade to whatever word I can think of at the time. It's natural to move a bit forward, but to also have mistakes. The key is to not reprimand the student. Make it fun. Make a joke about how easily we forget things, remind the student gently, and move on. Otherwise, you will create a bad association for them with the subject.

That's simple. I listen to what the student tells me, and then I listen to what the student doesn't tell me. The student will address his or her main concerns, but other areas may come apparent to me when we begin to work. If so, we will address that in a gentle way, too.

I teach a student, not as I was taught to teach, but as they need to be taught. I was one of the people who traditional teaching methods did not always work for, so I often had to make my own way, and it was often a hard way. I want to save my students this and realize they are individuals with different backgrounds and needs.

Anything that helps the student learn in his or her own way. Icebreakers, jokes, pictures, writing, fill in the blanks, questions, minimization of huge issues, gentle reassurance, and outside sources. I also can write lesson plans, of course, or tailor specific assignments to the student. I will tailor my efforts to a student's needs and requests.