What is your teaching philosophy?

No two students learn and think in exactly the same way. A teacher should strive to accommodate students' widely varying strengths, weaknesses, and individual thought processes.

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

In a typical first session, I would try to develop a clear sense of the student's strengths and weaknesses with regard to the specific subject. This would include both asking questions explicitly and offering some sort of preliminary assessment. I would develop teaching methods by taking the information I gather from these steps into account.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

For a student to become an independent learner, the student must understand how to apply his or her personal learning style to a specific subject. Discussing personal study habits and developing concrete review methods for the student to refine would help the process.

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

I would speak with the student to try identifying specifically where the difficulty learning the skill or concept arises. Given that information, I would try to lay out a step-by-step, easy to digest framework for approaching applications where that concept is involved. Practice would be a point of emphasis, because, without practice, the student would have no way of knowing the extent of his or her understanding of the skill or concept.