Derwent Park's tutors include a former university assistant professor with over a decade teaching STEM, an ATAR 99.70 medical student and HSC All-round Achiever, a primary teacher trained in the UK and Qatar, seasoned VCE maths and science mentors with top academic honours, and highly qualified language specialists with international classroom experience.
We had our first lesson with Jacob tonight and I wanted to let you know that we were highly impressed with him. Jacob seems to be a great fit for my daughter, was very friendly and knowledgeable. I wanted to pass this feedback on and let you know that we are very happy with Jacob.Samantha
Year 5 student Scarlett focused on sentence structure, including independent and dependent clauses, and practiced identifying Greek and Latin roots in vocabulary by creating example sentences.
In Year 12 Chemistry, Aimee worked through stoichiometry problems involving mole-mass conversions and reviewed organic chemistry concepts ahead of an upcoming SAC using practice questions.
Meanwhile, Charli in Year 12 Biology revised the adaptive immune system topic with targeted short-answer questions and explored the principles of CRISPR-Cas9 gene technology through guided discussion.
A Year 10 chemistry student often became overwhelmed by multi-step questions, leading to confusion and missed marks on stoichiometry and equilibrium tasks; as one tutor observed, "breaking down the detail into smaller parts" was key but rarely attempted independently.
In Year 7 English, another student hesitated to write unless ideas felt perfect, stalling progress on memoirs and biographies—her apprehension led to unfinished drafts rather than refining work through revision.
Meanwhile, a senior biology student tended to avoid using subject-specific terminology in exam answers, which limited her ability to demonstrate full understanding under pressure.
One Derwent Park tutor noticed Aimee, a senior student, now actively pinpoints her own gaps in Chemistry—she'll pause mid-problem to ask for clarification rather than just move on, which is a big shift from earlier sessions when she hesitated to speak up.
Charli, also in high school, has started drawing diagrams unprompted to tackle tricky biology questions; before, she'd stick only to written notes and often missed key links.
Meanwhile, Cameron (Year 7) drafted a short story independently and was keen to apply new punctuation skills by proofreading their work together with the tutor.
