What is your teaching philosophy?

Work hard and understand yourself, and you will gradually become better at understanding the material. Step one is knowing your weaknesses and knocking them out one by one. This can be achieved in a positive and encouraging way too, with little frustration.

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

I like to get to understand the kind of student they are. What do they want to work on themselves? Do they find themselves struggling with the same type of thing over and over again? Do new challenges seem to arise with every class they take? From there we can discuss how to eradicate weaknesses and begin working on practice problems, or start working through previous works and analyzing mistakes.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

I plan on helping students learn to analyze problems or essays and understand what quality work looks like. Students have to see a mistake, recognize why it's a mistake, and be cautious not to make that mistake again in the future. Similarly, students have to know when they've produced quality work, recognize what makes it quality work, and attempt to achieve the same quality of work going forward. Becoming aware of your work is what helps students become independent thinkers and achieve success on their own.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Positive reinforcement is a must when working with students. Students need to know when they've done something well and they need to know that they can always be successful. It's easy to feel like a situation is hopeless but it never is. I will work hard to get my students to understand that putting in effective time and effort will always produce results. And results should be a primary motivator.

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

There are a few main steps to helping students learn concepts they are struggling with. The way I go about it is by breaking down the concept into small steps and making sure that students understand each small step along the way. That way, when we reach the part they don't understand, we can target the problem and break it down further. Another important step to this is repetition, and working through a bunch of problems in order to get the concept and muscle memory into the student’s head.

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

Understanding one’s weaknesses is a huge help when working with a student. It not only gives the student something to look out for, but it helps me guide their learning as we go through our tutoring sessions. Another important strategy is practice, practice practice. What helped me improve in math and writing, was just constantly doing it. I did more SAT Math problems than I can remember but I know that it doing them, and understanding how to do each and every one was what brought my score up. Writing essays wasn't different. The more work that I cranked out, the better I became. The last strategy I like to employ, is watching someone else do something and attempting to emulate the work. Sure, doing things your own way is important. But we can learn a lot from trying to imitate others. A student can find what works for them and what doesn't. It also provides structure early on that a student might not have if they did things their way right off the bat.

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

I focus on results. Getting the answer to a problem is like winning one battle. If you win enough battles you can win the war. The same goes for reading and writing. If you make it through a paragraph and comprehended what you read, then that is a victory! Working toward small goals and achieving them is what is exciting about the work. Seeing improvement in yourself is exciting, and I try my very hardest to make it easy to see self-improvement.