Kris
Certified Tutor
Undergraduate Degree: University of California-Los Angeles - Bachelors, European History
Graduate Degree: University of California-Los Angeles - PHD, European History (Early Modern Germany)
Swimming, reading novels, learning foreign languages
College World History
German 1
German 2
German 3
High School World History
What is your teaching philosophy?
Teaching is not a "side job" for me - it's my career. This is what I was trained to do. For the past fifteen years I've been teaching History at the collegiate level, first at a large research university, then at a small liberal arts school, then at a first-rate community college. I’ve taught lecture courses with enrollments of more than three hundred students, as well as intimate seminars with as few as five participants. My courses have ranged from broad surveys of World History, Western Civilization, and Jewish History, to specialized investigations of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Nazi Germany, and Twentieth-Century Europe. My teaching effectiveness is due not only to the many hours I’ve spent in the classroom, but also to my travels. My ability to capture students’ attention owes a heavy debt to the first-hand knowledge of European culture that I acquired while living in Germany. During the year-and-a-half that I spent conducting research in that country (financed in part by a Fulbright Fellowship), I became fluent in the German language and gained insights into European politics and society that I could never have gleaned from the pages of any book. Although I have spent most of my professional life instructing undergraduates, I am excited by the prospect of working with younger students as well. Many of the skills that I developed while teaching at colleges are also applicable to tutoring high schoolers and middle schoolers. For example, I know how to create a learning environment that is relaxed yet rigorous, lively yet structured, and conversational yet academic. I am practiced at teaching basic writing skills, which are often lacking even at the collegiate level. And I am adept at holding students’ attention through the use of visual and auditory aids. (I typically bring my laptop computer to class, which allows me to incorporate text, maps, photographs, and video clips into my lessons). I'm an organized instructor who arrives at every class meeting with a lesson plan tailored to my students' individual needs. In addition, I come prepared with visual aids and handouts, in order to deepen my pupils' understanding of the material.