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

My goal for our first encounter is to get to understand my student's learning style and to see how I can assimilate my style into their way of thinking. My goal is simple; to help build solid foundations with the tools available and keep modifying at the student's pace if necessary.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

By having the student teach me their ways and then help them enhance their learning styles. Interactive teaching sessions are the best approach to helping students become active learners and independent learners.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Motivation can be derived from all walks of life, but what matters is that the motivational piece must be student centered. I tailor my motivational goals around student interests and aspirations. For example, although videos are quick motivations, they may only appeal to visual learners so it is not always the best approach then. The phrase "one size does not fit all" is certainly true when it comes to keeping students motivated; it takes getting to harness each student interest and motivating accordingly.

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

Shift the learning approach to simple examples that communicate the concepts at hand without using the original jargons. Try to level the learning field to match the student's understanding. This method allows effective, intellectual conversation to flow, and interest to be developed.

What is your teaching philosophy?

Every tutoring session is an opportunity to engage in some awesome intellectual conversation outside the classroom. It provides an atmosphere to be creative and have fun with our study materials while developing some mental retentive and comprehensive muscles. I love learning, and I hope that we can learn together and enhance learning skills to be autonomous and active productive students.

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

Reading comprehension can be very taxing, especially when the subject matter is so uninteresting, boring or abstract. In such cases, we have to employ our creative and imaginative skills to help us to stay focused. My goal is to help students to find ways to stay engaged and attentive to the task at hand. It definitely helps overcome the boredom, and with fine focusing, we have better retention and understanding of the challenge at hand.

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

I find it most rewarding and productive to evaluate what learning tools and skills we have at hand. I like to know my students’ approach to facing challenges both outside and inside academia. This knowledge helps me create a student-focused roadmap of how best to approach our sessions. This strategy has proven to be most invaluable.

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

By refocusing their viewpoint to a place that is familiar. I have noticed that in most cases, boredom comes from looking at a subject area as a chore rather than a challenge. I feel like when we take the seriousness and stress out of the equation, we actually have a better chance of being more engaged. I look at every subject as a clear canvas waiting to be painted on; however, our subjects that we need to draw are always changing, so the best way to address these changes is to approach each subject with a fresh and creative energy. I hope my painting analogy worked. Simply put, let's put some fun back into our studies; returning back to our kindergarten stages where our imagination roams wild. You are never too old to be creative.

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

Again, every student has their unique dominant learning styles; visual, hearing, seeing, touching, etc. Therefore, once we have established what the student learning skills, I will incorporate these outside learning tools into our sessions to better help my student with fundamentals, and eventually to fully comprehend their study materials.

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

I always like to stress the importance of why school subjects are arranged the way they are. All information builds on each other, and every level of the academic ladder prepares you for the next stage. Therefore, I remind my students that they know more than they think they do, and I will help them rediscover those learning skills and foundations I know they have. This is how you build self- confidence, and we test out our theories and knowledge base through quizzes and games.

How do you evaluate a student's needs?

Based on their performances in terms of grades and their honest feedback. Test scores tell us more than just grades; they help us identify weak learning areas and evaluate our comprehension of the materials. Therefore, I find it useful to start with that, as well as oral exams to check understanding.

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

Tutoring is one area where everybody engaged in our intellectual conversation must be willing to adapt. I always try to create a level playing field so we can really talk to each other. I find it to be overwhelming when we use too much technical jargon in a conversation, so adapting to their working knowledge really helps to have that effective conversation that eventually benefits the tutee.

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

Official study resources (textbook), YouTube (I find it sooooo useful), analogies, practice questions and Google Scholar (always helps with understanding jargon). These resources again vary from student to student.