What is your teaching philosophy?

I believe that children have the capacity to learn almost anything. It is more important to instill an individual curiosity than it is to impart lifeless concepts.

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

Build rapport, define goals, assess, and develop a path to achieve goals.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

Emphasize the value of lessons/systems/strategies that are self-discovered over being taught.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Parallel the concepts and practice to real life situations or games.

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

Present the concept in the most concrete manner possible and practice application until the abstract idea becomes viable.

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

Taking time to partition the text and focus on understanding the segments before attempting to understand the whole text.

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

Creating a rapport that allows for the student to comfortably explain their thought process in real time allows for intervention within the thought process itself.

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

Connect the subject matter to the student's interests and real life application.

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

Verbal and written assessments would include discussing the thought process during problem solving, solving similar problems, and having the student create similar problems.

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

Provide plenty of opportunities to succeed.

How do you evaluate a student's needs?

Discuss it with the parent(s) and the student separately and together.

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

Openly and willingly. I will present information in any way that allows a student to more easily understand and apply it, be it in aural, visual, or tactile form.

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

Electronics (laptop/iPad tablet), paper/whiteboard, writing utensils.