What is your teaching philosophy?

I believe that students learn in an environment that is natural, safe, inclusive, and accepting. As an educator, I strive to facilitate an open space in which students are able to ask any and all questions, learn from experience, and gather skills throughout our time together. I believe that education is not a spotlight to be put upon the educator, but rather a stage for the student. In each session with a student, I allow their questions to drive us and ensure that we achieve mastery of one concept before moving to the next. Education, especially that in English and literature, is a necessity of the modern age. I believe that a true education allows students of any age to create their individual and unique voice. It is the job of the educator to help students bring that voice out of the woodwork and project it into spaces of success.

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

In a first session with a student, I would allow a few moments for us to get to know each other and discover our commonalities. Learning from someone that you have a connection with is much easier than learning from a stranger, so I would hope to find that connection, whether it is talking about our dogs, recalling travel memories, or sharing an interest or a favorite piece of media. After that, I would ask the student where their strengths and weaknesses are within our given topic, assess where we are, and where we need to be from there.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

The key to student independence is self-monitoring! I strive to always teach students the process of internal questioning when reading, writing, spelling, or comprehending. By building internal questioning skills, and by modeling those questions in our sessions, students will develop the ability to bring internal questioning into their own daily experiences with texts. Eventually, these students will internalize these questions into their subconscious, thus creating self-monitoring.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Students are all different, and they all require different methods of motivation. For younger students, I would hope to be in contact with the parents and develop a motivation plan according to the student's interests and desires. For older students, I hope to build internal motivation by providing challenging activities that allow students to experience success.

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

Often times, learning a concept is not a matter of difficulty, but rather just finding the right way to learn it. If a student is showing difficulty with a specific skill or concept, I would teach the concept in a variety of ways, and I would be sure to include hands-on activities (as some students are kinesthetic-learners) .

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

I am trained in providing reading comprehension tutoring, and I am passionate about bringing comprehension up. We would work to improve detailed recollection and imaging skills throughout a text, and then we would work through higher-order thinking processes in regards to the sequencing of events and their causes. With practice, comprehension difficulties can be overcome!

What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?

I have found that working off of a student's interests provides the most success when beginning new topics. As a reading and writing tutor, I have the privilege of having a great deal of topics at my disposal to teach. For example, if a student is interested in baseball, then we would begin our lessons by reading baseball-related texts (at their reading level), or we would write about their experiences with baseball. If a student was interested in robotics, or math, or swimming, etc., the same method would apply. Students can latch onto the familiar, and then we can explore what we need to work on together.