What is your teaching philosophy?

I want to help someone be their best selves. I don't want to recreate myself; I want to help the person I'm helping pursue a goal they want to achieve themselves. They are the driver. I am merely GPS. Either way, I support them and will push them to meet the goals a student has in mind for themselves.

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

I would try to understand where they are in the material, gauge that, and then set achievable weekly goals and tasks to achieve mastery in the subject piece by piece.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

I think it’s about giving them the facts, cut and dry, but then challenging them to humanize those facts into real-life scenarios and circumstances that form real life consequences. Yes, the Second Amendment is easy to understand, but what about when we're weighing the limits on the right? It's in this deeper analysis where someone truly understands what they think.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

I would encourage them to see past their present, and into their future. You're going to school and getting good grades because it feels good presently, but also because it's setting you up to reach bigger goals and milestones down the road. Future Self will be thankful Present Self buckled down and handled their business.

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

Make it relatable to something the student is actually interested in. Oftentimes material doesn't lend itself well to being relatable, and this can make the material feel foreign and harder to adapt to. However, once that material is made more inviting to the student, they have an easier time digesting the material.

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

I give them practical reading assignments. I want them to read something they are interested in, and then report back to me on what they found when they read. From there, I can see if the student truly has a problem with the skill of reading comprehension (unlikely, but possible), or if the student is struggling with the subject area itself.

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

Understand how the student feels about their performance. Try to understand what exactly they hope to get from this experience, and from there giving them the steps it will take to reach that point. Also, the student should understand that we are a team. It will take us working together to get anywhere worth getting to.