My Qualifications
Native English speaker (USA)
CEFR level C1 French
MA (Bac+5) in Professional and Technical Writing
BA (Bac+3) in English Literature with honors
14 years of classroom experience teaching middle school, high school, and university students in Asia, Europe, and the USA
10 years of professional document design, writing, editing, and proofreading for a multi-national corporation
Licensed teacher in the USA
Qualified Teacher Status in the UK
General Benefits of 1-on-1 Learning
The primary benefit of 1-on-1 lessons is individualized attention. The average class size in most high school and university education is between 15 and 25 students. Teachers follow their lesson planning and differentiate as best they can for the students who need extra attention or who benefit from an accelerated course, but there is a limit to what they can do with the time they have. With private tutoring, areas of difficulty can be identified quickly and instruction can be targeted to help the student excel far more efficiently than in a normal classroom.
Students also benefit from being able to work at their own pace. There's no one else to shout out answers before you have a chance to even understand the question, no more pressure to keep up or fall behind, no more anxiety or embarrassment when you struggle. The tutoring session exists solely for your benefit.
The final benefits of tutoring are accountability and motivation. When working with a live tutor, students have to show up and participate in the lesson or else it doesn't take place. Whether you're scheduling tutoring for yourself or your child, when you make the effort to reach out to someone, talk to them about your needs, and ask them to set aside time to help, you create a social pressure to come to class and "get your money's worth."
My Teaching Philosophy
As a middle school, high school, and university teacher and tutor since 2009, when I'm in a classroom full of students, my goals are usually tied to teaching/improving certain skills and making sure that they are reading texts that are either 1) part of the American/English literary canon 2) will be useful for them on standardized tests or in university courses. There are, as you can imagine, many different ways of working toward these goals, and throughout my career, I have altered my own approaches according to class size, length of lessons, student personalities and preferences, etc.
Tutoring really allows me to strip everything else away and practice student-centered learning. This manner of learning is the complete opposite of lecture-style classes where the teacher is the repository of information "pouring" it into the heads of the students: Instead the student brings in their goals, timeline, and motivation and the teacher brings in their expertise and experience and together they create a plan that puts the student's needs first.