What is your teaching philosophy?

Always be receiving information as you're giving information so that one can understand the student's particular ways of thinking and learning.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

Curiosity; everyone has something that really interests and excites them. Then a student uses other subjects to understand their interest more fully and find passion for difficult subjects.

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

Backup and make sure that they are solid on the concepts that this idea is built on, and then try to give an example or tell a story to illustrate the point.

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

I like to look for areas where the student has had a misunderstanding of a core concept in the past that is causing the current confusion. I also usually reteach a more recent area that they are currently working on so that they will be prepared for any upcoming quizzes.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

I would work to set personal goals every week that were reasonable but challenging and potentially work with the parents to provide small treats for regularly reaching those goals.

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

I like to focus on vocabulary to increase reading comprehension. When the student runs into unfamiliar words less often their comprehension increases. This sometimes involves slowing the reading speed temporarily, but I feel that in all learning it is important to focus on accuracy first and then speed.

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

The strategy I like to start with involves using 4-5 explanations focused on different learning styles to assess the best way to teach this particular student.

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

I like encourage students to make up applications for the concept, like telling a story of when one might use it, or by making up our own word problem.

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

By setting goals for incremental gains and by looking back on their progress to challenge the belief that they can't excel at this subject.

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

I like to keep it simple. I use a pen, paper, the student's textbook (except for test prep for which I have my own book) and sometimes loose change to help visualize numbers and fractions.

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

I would look for a topic that interested the student like sports and use it to put things in a context that engages the student’s interest and passion.

How do you evaluate a student's needs?

By looking at previous test (or a pretest for ACT/SAT) for the concepts that challenge that student the most. Then I target these areas and the core concepts they build from.

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

I do this by finding the interests they have that we could use for engaging examples and the learning styles they work best with to tailor my tutoring sessions.