Katie: Blue Island tutor

Certified Tutor

With me, you will find an effective combination of skillset and enthusiastic passion. Both have led to and will lead to academic growth in my students. I also just finished up a school year teaching virtually and so I'm very comfortable engaging elementary students online.

I was a national merit scholar at the #1 high school in Florida/6th in the U.S., and graduated with a degree in elementary education from Wheaton College in 2018. I have a current Illinois teaching license with endorsements in K-6 teaching (all subjects) ESL for grades K-12, and in middle school English Language Arts.

I have spent the past two years teaching ESL and kindergarten in a low-income urban context charter school in Chicago, IL. Through this time, I have developed my skills with both lower elementary and upper elementary/middle school students. My greater expertise is in reading/writing skills, but I'm also confident in elementary math.

Outside of the classroom, I work for Princess Party Chicago as a princess performer for children's parties and events. (Right now, we are virtual!) I also spent several summers running the children's ministry at my church, including planning and managing a Vacation Bible School of 100 kids and 40 volunteers.

While I tutor a wide variety of subjects, my passion is in literacy and number sense of young children. Watching a child move from learning their letter sounds to blending words to reading real books is a magic that I have seen nowhere else. I feel the same way when a student is learning a new math concept and after a long struggle, something just *clicks.*

I teach because I believe that education has the power to change lives. By equipping students with the skills they need to succeed in school and in later life, we can give them a wider range of choices and opportunities as adults.