What is your teaching philosophy?

I always want to push my students to be better. Especially with tutoring, it is about learning what you, the student, can do, and working with you to increase your skills and be able to perform on a consistent basis.

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

The first session involves two things. The first is to establish a professional rapport, seeing that we can work together, and outlining the goals of your tutoring. The second part of the first session is establishing your baseline: where you are starting from and what we can do to help you improve.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

All learning is fundamentally an independent activity. Only a student can learn; all a teacher or tutor can do is help expose the student to new information, give them the tools to process that information, and remove roadblocks to their learning. I would take my experience as a teacher in the classroom to explain the concepts, and then guide my student through the practice problems to help them develop the confidence and mastery necessary to say that they have learned something.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

In my experience, true motivation isn't found in concrete rewards. Motivation is about establishing a goal that seems both reachable and challenging. The key to pushing a student is a combination of expectation and encouragement. I expect that students will work towards the goals that they have set for themselves, and I encourage them as they take steps towards those goals, or to get back on track if they miss a step. The key is to stay positive, forward-looking, and goal-oriented.

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

Work at it. Practice makes perfect for two reasons. If you've got the concept, practice helps reinforce it. But if you are struggling, practice helps isolate the skill or concept that is lacking. Once that has been identified, we can work on it. I can explain the skill, demonstrate it a few times, and then guide the student through practice problems until the difficult skill has been mastered. We would then return to it during the next few sessions to "bake it in."