What is your teaching philosophy?

Developing the student is my main goal. My role as a tutor is not to help a student memorize information, but to think critically about the content. When a student can simply and clearly explain the content to someone else, they've got it.

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

Understand the student's general and specific academic goals, understand how the student learns the best, and begin brainstorming the topic at hand. I believe the biggest goal is getting on the same page with what the end goal is and to dig into the content in harmony.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

By listening and providing constructive feedback through questions and competing ideas. My tutoring philosophy is not to answer a question for the student, but to facilitate their thinking. Watching a student struggle isn't easy, but is sometimes necessary. It's what helped me learn.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Speak their language. Take an interest that's seemingly unrelated to the topic at hand and connect it. If we're talking about Comparative Political Systems and that bores the student like crazy, let's turn the various political systems into something they naturally like (sports figures, artists, cultural leaders) and begin analyzing that.