Allie
Certified Tutor
Undergraduate Degree: Williams College - Bachelors, Mathematics and English
SAT Composite (1600 scale): 1580
SAT Math: 800
SAT Verbal: 800
SAT Writing: 750
GRE Quantitative: 168
GRE Verbal: 169
Yoga, running, hiking, biking, cooking, reading, baking, making, and painting
College English
High School English
HSPT Language Skills
HSPT Math
HSPT Quantitative
HSPT Reading
HSPT Verbal
Quantitative Reasoning
SAT Subject Test in Mathematics Level 1
SAT Subject Test in Mathematics Level 2
SAT Subject Tests Prep
What is your teaching philosophy?
I believe in having fun, instilling confidence, sparking interest, and learning thoroughly.
What might you do in a typical first session with a student?
Figure out what's going on! What issues are you having, what are you getting hung up on, what do you not understand. Then we'll find strategies to get a handle on all those issues.
How can you help a student become an independent learner?
That's a great question, and it can be really hard. But communicating and showing what learning and education can do for the student, highlighting what the student will or can get out of her learning experience, is how I believe in approaching it. Increasing motivation increases engagement.
How would you help a student stay motivated?
Keep learning fun!
If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?
Figure out what part of the concept is unclear, then figure out alternate ways to explain that concept until something makes sense to them. For example, some people understand functions a lot better when they can visualize a graph. There are many different types of learning styles, and different ones work better for different students.
How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?
Practice, practice, practice. Reviewing for and identifying what's causing the comprehension issues are top concerns: is it vocabulary, attention, format, or something else? Identifying these will help guide the way to fixing these issues.
What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?
Figure out how the student learns. What are their hang ups? Strengths and weaknesses? What do they love or hate about a subject? Using this information can make all the difference in determining the best way to work with an individual.
How would you help a student get excited/engaged with a subject that they are struggling in?
Find some way of connecting the subject to an area they are interested in. How are these things related? What might the subject have to do with their lives? Showing the pertinence and relevance of a subject to a student's life makes all the difference.
What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?
Ask them to complete another practice problem on their own, and check for comprehension at each stage of the solving process as well as for final correct answer.
How do you build a student's confidence in a subject?
Give them positive support. With enough help, time, and effort, I believe anyone can learn anything. I provide that help and time to ask that they give that effort.
How do you evaluate a student's needs?
Diagnostic mini-tests of subject material, whether that's practice problems of various kinds or asking about needs directly. I work collaboratively and encourage open channels of communication about levels of comfort and engagement with material.
How do you adapt your tutoring to the student's needs?
As the need arises. It's most important that a student feel comfortable with me so that they are able to engage in their best learning. After that, I adapt instruction to just at/above a student's level of comprehension: this is shown by psychologists to be the best way to learn.
What types of materials do you typically use during a tutoring session?
The materials given by a classroom teacher or test prep books are the primary resources. I begin with those and go from there as individual needs arise.