My passion for helping students began at a young age. Watching a child learn and achieve something is a wonderful experience. I particularly enjoy the diversity of personalities, abilities, backgrounds and cultures I have worked with over the years. I passionately believe in a child centered approach. This involves getting to know the child, their interests and their learning style in order to maximize their learning potential. I also believe in a collaborative approach to teaching were all relevant people have their recommendations and concerns heard, recognized and integrated into the child's education. When teaching, I like to integrate a lot of different elements into the learning experience were appropriate including art, exploration, music and movement. I believe this helps to include all pupils and cater to different learning styles.
Although a lot of my experience is in Special Education, I have taught in mainstream education as well. The skills I have acquired lend themselves to all pupils learning styles.
I received a bachelor's degree in Primary Education from Queen's University in Belfast, Ireland. I also have a master's degree in Special Education (with specialist studies in Autism Spectrum Disorders) from Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland. I have completed over forty professional development courses in education since leaving college, both in general and special education. I constantly strive to keep educating myself further.
My twelve year teaching experience includes five years in a school for Mild General Learning Difficulties (Ages 4-18), three years establishing a special class for pupils with ASD (Ages 5-12), two years teaching Kindergarten and two years teaching in Special Education with small groups or one to one tutoring (Ages 5-12). Through each experience I have gained a lot of knowledge and understanding of a wide range of learning needs in a range of contexts.
My favorite subjects to tutor are Mathematics and English. Through working with a wide variety of pupils I have had to reimagine these subjects in their purest and basic forms to make them more accessible to all pupils.