What is your teaching philosophy?

I'm happy to work with students to try different methods of instruction than most in-class, large-group settings. I've found that working closely and one-on-one with a student allows for a tutor to understand better how a student is processing a concept in order to provide more accurate individual direction.

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

In a typical first session, I talk with the student to see what explicitly their goals are, and ask them to be involved in coming up with a plan for meetings, workload and itinerary. Lastly, I will also try and do a general assessment of the student's prior knowledge.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

Becoming an independent learner requires that the individual student be able to propose constructs and models as well as notice patterns. I do, this first and foremost, by making these constructs and these patterns apparent in any tutoring that I'm doing so that students themselves begin to look for them.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Encouragement! Kind words mean more than we realize.

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

Provide assignments to the student related to the skill or concept that would try to assess where exactly the student is going wrong. Let's say a student is learning a foreign language and can't tell when to use what verb tense. Instead of repeating the same information the student has already heard, it is much better to personalize the learning to the student and come up with a practice activity to apply the skill/concept and see what errors are occurring in the student's thinking such that it prevents them from grasping a certain idea.