What is your teaching philosophy?

Teaching isn't a one-way transmission of information from teacher to student. My job as a teacher is to provide the resources, help, and supportive environment that students need in order to learn.

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

Before we do anything else, we need to establish goals and a baseline. Once I know what my student wants and needs, I'm able to direct the lesson plan to help them succeed.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

The Socratic method may be an oldie, but it's still a goodie. "Does this look like a question you've seen before?" "How would you go about tackling it?" "Let me point something out. Does that change how you'd try to solve the problem?" "Excellent! What do you need to know to get to the answer?"

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Meaningful, measurable, and realistic goals make it easier for us to assess progress and celebrate milestones. It's also important to step back and remind ourselves why this test or this class matters in the long run.

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

What other learning strategies can we use? How else can we approach this? How is this like other things the student has already mastered?

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

Read, read, read. Find books in a subject they really love so they can practice reading. Have them read newspaper articles and annotate them as they do for critical reading passages. Keep reading, keep practicing.