What is your teaching philosophy?

Teaching should be tailored to meet individual students' particular strengths and weaknesses.

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

Build a relationship and determine the student's strengths and weaknesses in order to leverage the strengths and mitigate weaknesses in future sessions.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

Show that students are capable of solving problems and answering questions on his or her own, and praise effort, curiosity, and initiative.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Constantly challenging and encouraging students is the best way to motivate them.

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

Find a way to relate the topic or skill he or she is struggling with to something that he or she understand or enjoys.

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

Find a strategy that works for that particular student. Skim passages to reread for details. Summarize each paragraph or page. Eventually, you find a strategy that works for that student.

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

Get to know the student so you can relate things that they don't understand or struggle with the things that they are interested in. For example, averages and baseball (batting average).

What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?

Have the student explain the concept back to me or have them create a sample problem and then solve it.