What is your teaching philosophy?

My teaching philosophy is based on my experience as a history teacher at a large university. While some see history as a series of events, as a teacher, I try to illustrate how larger trends and processes unfold over many years and how seemingly distant events are intimately connected. To do so, I prefer focusing on these bigger trends and patterns, sketching a historical outline and then illustrating it with concrete examples, showing students the bigger picture as well as distinct case studies to explain how processes played out in different contexts. In these examples, I would stress the use of primary sources, bringing them right into the classroom and the story. On one hand, we can talk about, for instance, political repression in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. But letting historical actors speak for themselves through primary sources like political manifestos, protest songs, or images of brutal clashes between the government and the people allows students to witness that history from the present. As a history student during my undergraduate years, it was important to hear historical voices in the story, giving life and stakes to the information that I processed. The skills learned in the field of history can be translated to other areas involving writing, critical analysis of sources, and crafting an argument. Similarly, using media, art, and literary sources in language teaching can make a foreign language more accessible as well.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

I believe in positive reinforcement, so I make a point to acknowledge when the student makes progress on his or her learning, emphasizing that as their tutor, I am looking at their work 'from the outside' and can therefore see where they have improved whereas the student might see their struggles more clearly than their progress. I also believe and emphasize that learning is an ongoing process, and academic skills don't come naturally to most people - they are skills which require practice over time. With a subject like Spanish, I try to relate to the student's struggles by talking about issues that I found difficult as well.

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

One strategy to practice comprehension is note-taking. The student can break down a longer passage, article, or chapter of a book into smaller pieces, taking notes paragraph by paragraph, which is much less daunting than looking at the reading as a whole. After taking notes on these smaller sections, they should answer questions such as, "What is the particular point, argument, or angle of each section?" "How do those contribute to the reading as a whole?" Additionally, we tend to remember information better if we write it down, so this strategy can help in multiple ways.