Christopher: Pflugerville tutor

Certified Tutor

I am an experienced tutor who is passionate about education in general and my students in particular. I help them to enjoy the material they are studying and to achieve even their most ambitious goals. I attended Collegiate School and Harvard University, as well as graduate school at Columbia Business School--and also studied in international schools in NYC and Europe, so that I have been exposed to different teaching and learning styles. I believe that it is absolutely true that every student learns differently--I am a very outgoing "people person" and that has helped me to make my students feel comfortable and to gauge how they learn best: by repetition on a regular basis or by going over different topics and then coming back to them; or by doing creative projects and readings from games, films or media that makes them see links and patterns that they would not otherwise see. Some are visual learners, others respond to hearing concepts and rhythms and are more auditory; some are verbal and learn best by reading about a topic; some are physical doers and learn though experiments and for building and touching a 3-D geometric figure out of cardboard or on a computer screen. Most students are a mix of several of these learning styles.
I tutor students of all ages as well as adults. I truly love teaching and always work with each student differently to provide the most individualized and effective tutoring. i also try to get to know their hobbies and interests and bring these into lessons whenever possible:we might study the latest baseball scores for a statistics lesson or view a French film for a particular grammar lesson. for example. I try to clip or tab stories on whatever I know interests them for English and history sessions especially. I also encourage students to keep a diary of ideas or a notebook where they can keep track of their work and ideas.
Some examples I am proud of: I taught one adult student good basic conversational and written French in 6 months. Two of my students whom I tutored in a few subjects each for several years in High School went from being B/B+ students to gaining admission to the University of Chicago and Smith College. Just as important to me however are the struggling students who for the first time pass a subject or who simply improve enough that they have gotten to the next level in a particular subject. I am also good at preparing students for tough exams or when they have a short window of time: i will make detailed schedules and lists for them and make sure that they stay on schedule--I am always available if they have a last minute question or or problem by email or otherwise.