What is your teaching philosophy?

I am a post-physics teacher with an immense background knowledge and academic exposure providing specialized tutoring with teacher / university experience. Tutoring and test preparation ranges from: Science 1 -12 Math 1 -12 Science BS tutoring ACT Test preparation SAT test preparation TEAS GRE Quality individualized learning strategies are employed and confidentiality maintained. Call to set up a time or introduction. Knowledge is power, and academics are essential!

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

I’ve been a professional tutor for ten years, but the first day is so vital in breaking down barriers and getting the student to pass the information to the learning part of the brain. Here are my first steps in developing a tutor / student relationship. I will waste time outright at the beginning. I need to chat with the kid. I will never ask about Math or English or History initially. In the first five minutes or more, I don’t care about those subjects. A lot of tutoring is about rapport, and first-impressions are key. I need to make sure I am someone your child feels comfortable talking to. I will ask about life at school, about interests, about TV shows, anything. I will add wry commentary -- never goofy, clowny distraction, but the kind of humor that lets the student know that I am listening and thinking about the things that interest them. I want to laugh with them and laugh at myself in the first fifteen minutes. I will spend time inefficiently. When we get to the subject at issue, I want the conversation to be very general. I want my students to do most of the talking. I want to hear what sort of language they use to talk about where they’re struggling and where they’re comfortable. If a student tries to redirect toward a specific homework problem or test result, I will redirect back to general challenges. The homework or test is a symptom. I want to know how it fits in the student’s self-concept. This is fuzzy stuff. It’s also important. I will not help your child complete an assignment. I want to make sure that my students do not look at me as someone who solves problems. I am someone who helps them help themselves solve problems. We may work through a couple of specific problems together, but they will not go quickly. We will digress to discuss context and methodology. My priority isn’t to get tonight’s assignment done. I want to orient my students toward underlying concepts and, even more so, toward process. These foster independence. And that is my ultimate responsibility. Your child will still have homework to do after I leave. I will not come with a lesson plan. No matter how much a parent and I might talk about a student and his or her challenges beforehand, in reality I know virtually nothing going in. Time spent prepping is time wasted and time that will only distract from the interpersonal stuff that day one is all about. The most important thing we need to know at the end of day one is whether we can work together. I should only stay an hour. In my experience the ideal tutoring session is 90 minutes. But on day one, we should spend just an hour. Day one is about the fit. Setting it up as something else (unless we’re in last-minute emergency test-review mode) is delusion.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

I let the student do the work. By giving control of the process to the student, it encourages active learning and increase the student’s self-confidence. The learning process can be frustrating and slow. Part of the learning process is also getting things incorrect and learning from it. If you are doing the work or “showing” everything to the student then the learning experience is yours and not the student’s. Turn the learning over to the student and guide their thinking but do not think for them.