What is your teaching philosophy?

There is no such thing as "I can't do it." With hard work, flexibility, and a patient teacher, any individual can master whatever topic they put their mind to. It may take more time and effort, but it can be accomplished.

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

The first session is about assessing a student’s current state. Without knowing the starting point, it is difficult to measure improvement and create a curriculum that will challenge the student.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

The key to independent learning is providing the student with tools that make independent learning less daunting. Many of these tools are basic. For example, teaching students how to organize their thoughts, create study guides, and establish study schedules are skills that can be transferred among topics and can be used throughout a student's academic career.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Humans are creatures that respond to incentives. Knowing this, as a team the student and I would create a study and incentive schedule. These incentives might include material goods, or, more likely, might include intangible goods, such as more time with friends, an extra day off from studying, or so on. Knowing that there is a means to an end keeps the student from feeling that the torture of their discomfort is infinite.

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

First, it is important to understand what the student enjoys learning about. As a tutor, determining the student's other interests can help me identify what kinds of examples and analogies can be best used to explain the difficult subject matter. Often it is not that the student cannot understand the concept, it's that he/she cannot understand it in the way it's currently being explained. As such, my job as a tutor is to develop other creative ways to explain a concept to a student that is more relatable to their interests.

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

Go back to the basics. Without a foundation, it's difficult to build. For reading comprehension, it is important to understand the basic format of a paragraph and an argument. Once the student masters locating the thesis, topic sentences, examples, etc., we can move on to more complicated comprehension questions, such as counterarguments, literary devices, and so on.