Brittany

Certified Tutor

I currently work part-time as a swim instructor for students of all ages, whether they're completely new to the water or they're looking to further hone their skills on a competitive level. I have found a passion for working with various types of people and seeing what works best with them. Through this job, I found that part of my teaching philosophy is having my students create a long-term goal(s) for themselves. That long-term goal allows me to view the steps needed to get to that point and create some short-term goals that will aid in them achieving their overall goal. I recognize and understand that students are all different in terms of how they perceive information, so my goal for myself is to adapt to the needs of my own students to see what works best for them.

I studied at Duke University, where I majored in Biology and minored in Chemistry and History. I was recruited to swim for the Varsity Swim and Dive team at Duke, where I swam distance freestyle and butterfly. As an undergrad, I was pre-med and spent the remainder of my free time volunteering through various programs at the school.

Two programs impacted me the most during my time as a student - the CAPE and ACE programs. Through the Collegiate Athlete Premedical Experience (CAPE) program, I was able to volunteer at the Brain Tumor Center of the Duke Hospital. There, we collaborated with doctors, PAs, and nurses to aid in the livelihood and well-being of recurring/newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients. We gained firsthand experience working with patients of various backgrounds while obtaining the history of and performing the neural exam on patients. The other program that deeply impacted me was the Student-Athlete Civic Engagement (ACE) Program. During that program, 5 student-athletes from Duke and 5 from Stanford went to one of 4 places to ethically volunteer/run sports camps. I was selected from a pool of applicants to go to rural Cusco, Peru, where we built a greenhouse, renovated a tree nursery, and paved a trail to a viewpoint to promote environmental conservation and rural tourism in Cusco. Under the guidance of the rural Peruvian community, I was able to both utilize the Spanish I knew and learn conversational Spanish and a little bit of Quechua, the local language. After returning from Peru, I applied and was accepted to be an Ambassador for the ACE program at Duke.

My strong suits for teaching include Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Spanish, and Math through Calculus.