What is your teaching philosophy?

We all learn in different ways; determining how you best grasp and understand material is vital to succeeding in your education. A teacher must recognize this and approach each subject in the manner that will provide his students the best opportunity to master the material. You have got to make sure to have a little fun along the way as well.

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

During the first session with each student, I like to find out his or her learning style and goals for our tutoring. A good start and ensuring we see eye-to-eye gives us the best chance to have a productive tutoring relationship.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

Encouraging students to learn and approach the material in his or her own way and demonstrating how concepts build on one another allows students to take ownership of their education and become independent learners.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Maintaining motivation in difficult subjects can be a problem for learners of all ages. Trying to keep things fun and having a variety of things we can do during each lesson helps us both to stay motivated and focused on the tasks at hand.

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

There are often a number of approaches to solving a problem or understanding a concept. With this in mind, we can look at things in a different way and approach it from a different angle if the learner is having trouble with a certain concept. I find that real-world applications and analogies are a great way to make difficult concepts more easy to understand.

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

Struggling with reading comprehension can be very anxiety-provoking and can damage a learner's confidence. Breaking down reading passages to look for strategies for locating pertinent information and encouraging frequent practice can help to rebuild and maintain the confidence in his or her abilities.

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

By listening to a student's goals and favorite approach to learning, the first session can set the stage for a great tutoring relationship. Looking at the amount of time available to tutor with the student and deciding how to best use that time can help to ensure that we will always be on the same page as our tutoring progresses. Also, it is important to establish very early on that the student can always feel comfortable attempting to answer in a judgement-free environment so that his or her learning confidence is never affronted.

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

Each student learns differently and comes seeking tutoring for different reasons. Investigating what each student needs allows me to tailor my plan and approach. The structure, methods and pace are carefully considered and chosen to ensure a successful and efficient tutoring relationship.

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

During in-person tutoring, course materials, paper and pencil allow me to show students how to approach their courses and how to work through it. Visual aids, online videos and material may be utilized as well depending on what we are learning as well as the needs of the student. Online tutoring uses similar materials; the online tutoring platform allows me to teach in a similar manner as if I were tutoring in-person.

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

Struggling in a given subject can inherently make students uninterested as it can be a source of stress and feel like an opportunity to experience failure. By identifying what motivates the student in other subjects and in other activities, I can help students to find a reason to attend to the subject they are struggling in and hopefully enjoy it. From there, excitement can be built when the student sees that they can tackle something even if they initially had trouble with it. Building that confidence is very important in learning overall.

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

I like to ensure that we return to material from previous sessions in order to reinforce it and show how later techniques and ideas build as we progress through a subject. Utilizing these earlier concepts helps to solidify them in the learner’s mind and build the learner’s confidence in his or her understanding of the subject matter.

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

Frustration and struggles with certain subjects can be sources of stress and anxiety. These can turn off our minds to the desire to try to approach these materials. By working around these blocks using analogies and real-world applications, I show learners that they can understand the subject if they take the time to work at it. This helps to form confidence in the student's ability to overcome his or her initial apprehensions and struggles. Later, this can help to build self-efficacy that will help in future studies.

How do you evaluate a student's needs?

By breaking down incorrect answers or areas of struggle in order to understand which pieces are deficient or missing can help to guide our tutoring sessions. Usually frustrations with a given subject stems from an inability to understand a few concepts that the subject is built upon. By trying to figure out what those are, we can have the best chance of mastering them and then building into understanding a mastery of the subject matter as a whole.