
Adam
Certified Tutor
Undergraduate Degree: University of Virginia-Main Campus - Bachelors, Philosophy; Government
Graduate Degree: Stanford University - Masters, Education
Blogging, Exercising, Reading
Clinical Psychology
Elementary School Math
High School English
High School Political Science
High School Writing
Middle School Writing
Philosophical Ethics
Political Science
Social Sciences
What might you do in a typical first session with a student?
If a teaching relationship is to be successful, there has a to be trust and mutual positive regard. As such, I would start a session by getting to knowing a student as a human being, in addition to helping them get to know me as a human being.
How can you help a student become an independent learner?
Becoming an autonomous learner follows from teachers offering rigor AND support. Rigor refers to high expectations, diligence, and accountability. Support refers to the adoption of a growth mindset, wherein one believes that one's basic abilities are not fixed but capable of changing through hard work.
How would you help a student stay motivated?
For my entire teaching career, I have motivated through authenticity and positivity. In this life, there is a time for work and there is a time to play. When it is time to work, I am honest with my students. I do not use fear, threats, or platitudes. Instead, I come to class with a smile on my face, authentically check in, articulate the task, leverage students' strengths/passions, and positively reinforce.
If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?
I would ensure that the student feels comfortable expressing their confusion and then co-explore the skill/concept until we are mutually confident in their comprehension. This process may involve using new examples or different activities to help reframe the concept for the student.
What is your teaching philosophy?
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." In a sense, this encapsulates what I want for each of my students. I encourage students to develop their own authentic voice while at the same time developing in them the empathy necessary to feel into the authentic voices of others. At the end of the day, I want students to walk away a little better prepared to call upon their capacity to think, a little better prepared to call upon their capacity to feel, and a little better prepared to help others do the same.
How would you help a student get excited/engaged with a subject that they are struggling in?
It is never easy to work on a class in which you are struggling or that doesn't organically engage you. It is really, really important to acknowledge this. Thus, I would begin by taking the time to do this. Helping students to feel seen and heard is empirically proven to boost resilience. Next, I would help students "strength-spot," which is to say explore where they are successful in school as well as why that is the case. By building on one's strengths, weaknesses can feel a bit less daunting.
What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?
As I teacher, I used authentic assessments to measure growth within the larger context of safe classroom spaces. This could involve asking students to use knowledge/skills in real-world situations. This could involve asking them to teach the content to someone else. Fundamentally, if there is trust between teacher and students, everyone will feel comfortable expressing confusion. As such, I work hard to develop authentic assessments for students in addition to building rapport with them.
How do you build a student's confidence in a subject?
Confidence stems from past evidence of success. To build confidence, I would scaffold activities in such a way that mastery of a given topic would be routinely measured and routinely communicated. In this way, students would see their own improvement and generate greater confidence in the future.
How do you evaluate a student's needs?
I have worked with adolescents my entire career. I am experienced, intuitive, and deeply empathetic. I first began by checking in on the needs - not of the student - but of the human being in front of me. In this context, students will often clarify their own needs. Thus, I evaluate needs via my experience/intuition and a student's willingness to share their own experiences/intuitions about themselves.
How do you adapt your tutoring to the student's needs?
I am a user-centered educator. While it is certainly the case that I learn in a particular way, I am versed in teaching in a variety of ways, for a variety of learners. As such, if something is not working, I encourage my students to respectfully self-advocate and let me know. I also engage in regular self-assessment to adapt to student need in the future.
What types of materials do you typically use during a tutoring session?
I use a range of materials and a range of activities in a given session. In a given hour, I strive to plan 3-4 activities in order to boost engagement and ensure that students approaching material from various vantages. These could involve personalized problem sets, videos, visuals, and hands-on activities. This could involve traditional mini-lectures from me or non-traditional activities like "find a Google image that encapsulates this concept."
What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?
1. Help students feel safe/seen/heard, by taking time to check in on students - on a human level - at the beginning of all sessions. 2. Help students "strength spot" and notice/name where things are going well in their academic lives as well as how/why they were successful. 3. Help students identify authentic interests/passions, whether academic or nonacademic 4. Help students set tangible and practical goals
How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?
Our academic abilities - including reading comprehension - are not set at birth. We all start at a given point, but that point is not set throughout our lives. Through hard work, we can improve. This notion is known as a growth mindset, and you wouldn't necessarily know about it if you listened to how people talk about intelligence. As such, I talk to students about the construct and invite them to adopt a growth mindset in all things they attempt. With regards to reading comprehension, I support students in routinely pausing to self-assess whether they understood what they read. To check, they can paraphrase sections, connect current content to past content, and predict about future content. Another reading comprehension strategy is to use graphic organizers (e.g. Venn diagrams, story maps, etc.) that oblige students to apply and restate what they read.