After working as a volunteer teacher in several after-school programs throughout college, I traveled back to my home country of Sri Lanka to teach English. I worked with elementary and middle school students, and got hired at a second job as an ESL tutor for students age 18+. Working with students who had varying levels of experience and radically different cultural expectations taught me to become adaptable and open-minded about different teaching methods. I commonly used techniques such as story-writing exercises, class-wide contests, personal anecdotes, and pop culture analogies to explain concepts and help students have fun learning.

I obtained my degree in English at George Washington University in 2013. In October of that year, I took the LSAT and scored well. I plan on going to law school in 2015 or 2016. Until then, I will be pursuing two of my other passions: teaching and music.

As a teacher and tutor, my priority has always been to engage students. I look for two things when I begin working with a student: what aspect of this subject do they struggle with, and what aspect do they, or might they be inspired to, enjoy. I believe that motivation is essential to learning; if a student can be inspired to want to improve at a subject, only then can his/her true potential be reached.

Sometimes, students need a fresh perspective on a subject. As someone who is passionate about literature and language, I teach my students not only how to analyze readings and approach questions, but how to appreciate what they are reading. As an LSAT tutor, I ask my students to look beyond the difficulty and pressure imposed by the test, and focus on treating the test as a series of puzzles to be solved. The high standardized test scores are the students who actually enjoy tackling the questions, something than many students and even tutors forget.

Outside of tutoring, I spend most of my time practicing, writing, and recording music in my home studio. I play guitar and sing in a local band called Sealab, but have also played the drums since a young age. We play show in DC and occasionally in NYC as well. I hope to take my music as far it can go! I also do yoga every day, bike, sprint, swim, cook lots of spicy Indian/Sri Lankan food, read books for pleasure, and play the occasional RPG.

I look forward to each student as a new challenge, as an opportunity to explore new methods of teaching, and as a pupil to inspire. Tutoring is more than a way of boosting your scores - it's a journey between two people. I look forward to journeying with you!