Ever since I was young, education has always been very important to me. I have strong memories of my hand shooting into the air, excited to answer questions about addition and subtraction and the like. Now that I'm a college student studying Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, I've made the deliberate decision to become a tutor with Varsity Tutors. My first tutoring job was as a Teacher's Assistant for a 5 week summer enrichment program for middle school aged kids. Not only did I love teaching and relating information to each child's personal needs, but also I enjoyed being able to look back at material I had already learned from the fresh point of view of someone seeing it for the first time.
There are many reasons that I believe make me a good tutor but of all of them, I would like to highlight my patience and listening ability. Patience is important because the same material is processed differently by each student and it's important to learn how a student learns before plunging into the task of teaching them. For example, some students are good with just talking and a verbal explanation of the material would suffice in their understanding of it. On the other hand, others are more visual learners and being able to draw or graph something out is needed to fit their learning needs. Another skill that ties into patience is my listening ability. In and out of classes I've had a lot of practice at active listening and I use this skill to better gain access to what their trying to say and furthermore what they need from me to become successful.
Finally, I'd just like to reiterate how passionate I am about this job. Ever since I first started tutoring I loved it. I love talking with students about the subject matter and I love teaching it. Most importantly, I love the moment when a student finally gets it and they understand the material they've been working so hard to learn. I take this job very seriously and I just can't wait to get started tutoring students through Varsity Tutors.