I will also be finishing a B.A. in Spanish next year, and have studied French extensively, as well. Right now, I'm working on a Masters degree in urban planning. I've lived in Mexico, Spain, France and Quebec, and have been tutoring children and adults in both languages since 2006. I've been primarily an English tutor, and that work has involved helping students and people in a wide variety of situations, such as tutoring teenagers in Spain in beginning English, European children whose parents are residing here and need to attend our schools, foreign businessmen and women who want to improve their English, and U.S. students of all ages. It's been a wonderful experience because I love languages so much. I always approach every lesson with a great deal of enthusiasm because I enjoy the challenge of seeing someone solve a problem, get past a sticking point, or make progress. I'm a very relaxed person, so I'm easy to get a long with. I enjoy getting to know students and learning about their interests,too, because that's critical in being able to illustrate some aspect of a lesson in a way that relates to things that mean more to them. Working with people of so many different backgrounds has taught me that there are multiple ways or angles from which to tackle a problem. I'm not dogmatic or stubborn. I'm very thorough, however, as I care deeply about these subjects and feel great when I feel the lesson has been communicated properly and that it's been meaningful and helpful to the student. In tutoring foreign languages, I take pride in accurate pronunciation. I enjoy phonics and the sounds of words, so I put a lot of care into that feature of language learning that I think gets overlooked. Also, I'm versatile when it comes to arranging a grammar lesson in a different manner that might be clearer to students. Sometimes, textbooks will be too rigid in the way that concepts are presented. It's important that you can impart a logical application of a language to the way you would use it in real life. I'm very passionate about education, and feel that it is underemphasized in our country, so I'm thrilled that I can make a contribution to it through tutoring. I make every effort to keep lessons from seeming like drudgery by harnessing my wide range of interests to enhance discussions. I feel my strong background in music, the arts, history and politics, as well as having been athletic all my life, allows me to relate to people not just in a scholarly perspective, but through art, current affairs and sports. I play tennis, do quite a bit of biking and hiking, and juggle. I've been playing the saxophone for many years and have added practicing piano in the last decade, mostly to help me understand the chords over which I improvise in jazz.

Music, tennis, juggling, chess