What is your teaching philosophy?

True knowledge is achieved by traveling and striving on a path, and not by only seeing the end of that path.

What might you do in a typical first session with a student?

Learn where he or she is stationed in life and in learning.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

By teaching the way to approach learning a new topic, in addition to teaching a specific topic.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Break up the task into small pieces that can be accomplished consistently and show successful progress.

If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?

Ask someone more knowledgeable than myself for guidance.

How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?

Teach them how to associate words with images and ideas they have already internalized.

What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?

Put myself in the shoes of the student by first learning where he or she is at.

How would you help a student get excited/engaged with a subject that they are struggling in?

Remind him or her of the bigger picture and how the struggle will lead to a higher station of understanding.

What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?

Test him or her with examples that require similar patterns of thinking.

How do you build a student's confidence in a subject?

By gradually building up the difficulty of problems and projects that the student can tackle until the student knows his or her mastery of the subject.

How do you evaluate a student's needs?

By questioning the student of the knowledge he or she already does or does not have.

How do you adapt your tutoring to the student's needs?

Every student is different. So the first step for me is learning how the student thinks, how much he or she knows, and then putting myself in his or her place to begin the guidance down the path.

What types of materials do you typically use during a tutoring session?

Paper, colors, and diagrams.