
Austin
Certified Tutor
Undergraduate Degree: Portland State Univeristy - Current Undergrad, French Language and Literature, History, Social Sciences, and Arts and Letters
Theatre, running, and traveling
AP French
AP French Language and Culture
College English
Conversational French
French 1
High School English
Social Sciences
What is your teaching philosophy?
Learning a subject comes from passion. Passion paired with clarity are the seeds of a great education.
What might you do in a typical first session with a student?
I would assess goals for the session and find out some of the interests of the student to use for examples, and relate the subject to her/his everyday life. I would then get straight into the subject, and not only help for the duration of the session, but provide useful material to keep her/him learning between sessions.
How can you help a student become an independent learner?
By giving students the mental tools to approach the world, learning can become more independent.
How would you help a student stay motivated?
The passion of every student has to be unlocked. If the student truly doesn't care, then the learning will stop. That being said, by linking a student's life and interests with the subject at hand, that challenge can be overcome.
If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?
Difficulty learning a concept is often because of the way it is explained. I would explain the concept multiple ways using multiple analogies and/or connect the meaning of the concept to words the student already knows (sometimes terminology is the issue in conceptual learning because the terms seem not to match the idea).
How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?
The same text holds many meanings, not all of them correct. Sometimes, comprehension is low because the words themselves don't make sense. I would explain the keywords of any text to see first if the problem could be solved with a vocabulary boost. If not, analogies usually help with loftier ideas.
What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?
Clear explanations based on terms and a super-quick history of why X is called X, Y became Y, and sometimes just a clear-cut way of sorting through terms to what the teacher, textbook, or article is really saying.
How would you help a student get excited/engaged with a subject that they are struggling in?
1) Be excited myself. 2) Show how it matters to them as a person. Songs, videos, jokes, and other such references round out an education and add that extra bit of engagement.
What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?
Having a conversation with a student is often the best way to see if she/he has understood the material. If they say something that sounds wrong, but can then clarify and back it up, that's something no test can do.
How do you build a student's confidence in a subject?
Show the student that if taught well, most things are easier than they look. Often jargon gets in the way of simple-language explanations of "tough" concepts that really turn out to be manageable.
How do you evaluate a student's needs?
I would do a combination of listening to a student's self-confessed needs, and observe during a lesson what it is that she/he found most challenging.
What types of materials do you typically use during a tutoring session?
I typically use songs, simple diagrams, and sometimes photos of something being discussed (especially if I'm tutoring a language).
How do you adapt your tutoring to the student's needs?
If the student needs something within my skill-set, I am happy to ask them what exactly they need/want from the session. I am flexible, and the student is the boss.