What do I enjoy most about tutoring? 😁

After working with a large age range of students in Tokyo, I have come to appreciate the extent to which a good teacher can positively influence a student's life and attitudes. It's really satisfying to see students develop, not just academically, but also grow as people as well. I witnessed this with a number of students who were shy or had low confidence and seeing them gain trust in themselves and their abilities was a real pleasure.

My Strengths as Tutor 💪

As a trained journalist, I have great experience using a range of communication skills working with people from varied backgrounds. Being able to alleviate anxiety and quickly establish trust is very important in the education sector, especially with students who need their confidence building. The most useful teaching skill I believe, however, is adaptability. In Tokyo I taught multiple classes of same-aged students within a week. Each class certainly had its own personality. Because of this, I constantly found myself adapting the original lesson plan to suit my students' specific needs.

Most important things I can do for a student 🏅

Firstly, a tutor has to be able to understand the student's needs and then personalise a learning plan/ style that works for the student - one size does not fit all! Secondly, the tutor needs to guide the student not get them to parrot generic question answers. It's about building the students confidence up, through positive encouragement, and then helping them understand the information so that they can apply it in a number of formats. I usually try to get my students to pretend to "teach" me on the subject so that they can show me, and themselves, that they fully understand the topic.