Hello! I want to empower you to have confidence in yourself as you tackle your learning goals! I am friendly, encouraging, and a great listener. I want us to work together to figure out your personal learning style and focus on that to help you strategically learn and fully retain everything you need. I look forward to building your self confidence and love of learning, not just your skills in a given subject area. For students learning to speak English, I have been a foreign exchange student and "walked a mile in your shoes" by being submerged in a very different culture than the one I grew up in, while having to learn the language and culture quickly in order to get by. I would love to help you with conversational English, reading and writing skills, understanding the culture and what is expected in many common social situations. For reading and writing students, I want to help you get past whatever barriers are blocking you, so that you can enjoy a love of reading and writing that will not only boost your grades, but will enrich your life beyond school. I have enjoyed teaching Creative Writing both in a class setting and in individual tutoring, so if you are looking to enrich your creative outlet, I would love to fan your inspirational flame! For all other elementary subjects, I love to make exploration and your curiosity a fun part of learning so that subjects come alive to you. In my classroom, my students often told me that science was their favorite subject because we always had fun doing it, and we always "chased down our questions." One student even got mad that he missed one of our classroom experiments while he was on an awesome and fun family vacation; he complained to his mom for the rest of the year that he missed the sand tornado we made in the class!
I spent my freshman year of college as an exchange student at Tashkent State University, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1991, right as it was becoming independent from the USSR. I then graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor's in Near Eastern Languages and Culture. I worked as a paraeducator in the ELL program at Foster High School until I had my three children. Later on, I worked as the front office manager and gameday operations manager for an indoor soccer team and as a staffing manager and project manager for an event company. I decided to return to education, and worked as a K-8 substitute teacher, and earned my teaching certificate through Northwest Educational Development, teaching 2nd grade at Olympic View Elementary School.