What is your teaching philosophy?

When it comes to learning, every student is different. Some students learn best hands-on, others through hearing and seeing. My teaching philosophy is to teach in the method that works best and is most appropriate for each individual student's learning style. My teaching philosophy entails providing students the skills they need to succeed and carry over into other tasks and to think critically on their own to foster their independence as learners.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

I can help a student become an independent learner by giving them foundational skills, such as critical thinking and organization so that these can be used to solve a plethora of problems, make conclusions about new information, and foster a space for creativity and new ideas. Rather than memorizing content, I want my students to internalize what they are learning and begin making connections to other subjects they are learning.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Continual encouragement and praise in their successes will increase anyone's motivation. I would listen to my students and ask them questions to get to know them better, to develop trust from them, and to understand what motivates them. This would shape my style of teaching by incorporating their interests and showing them and reminding them how what we do in tutoring will lead to their achievement of goals.

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

If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, I would break the concept into smaller steps to see which particular part the student is having difficulty understanding. Once that is established, the lesson will involve targeting that particular step that is causing the student difficulty. If the student is still having trouble, I would change the way the concept is being taught by changing the style or incorporating more hands-on pieces to help with comprehension. At times even finding examples in the child's personal life that might relate and make the concept more understandable may be helpful too.

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

Struggles with reading comprehension can vary from vocabulary problems, punctuation misunderstandings, or sentence structure styles. There are many different forms to target reading comprehension that should all be incorporated in order to help the student learn their best mode to comprehend text. One example to address reading comprehension improvement may involve read alouds, in which the tutor provides a model of what he/she is thinking while the text is being read and asking the student questions to see if he/she is following along. This particular example can be taught to parents to do with the child on a daily basis to help improve this skill. Older students may benefit from reading small texts paired with comprehension questions and together with the tutor looking for the keywords within the text that match each question to make the necessary connections. The tutor can share what tricks and tips the student can use to help comprehend text and to learn what skills the student prefers and feels most successful with.