My goal as a tutor is to encourage students to become critical thinkers and self-directed learners.

I adopt a student-centered approach in which the primary measure of success is student learning rather than the mere delivery of information. My greatest joy in teaching comes from empowering students to teach themselves and each other. 

Throughout my career, I have definitely subscribed to the notion of reciprocity between teaching and learning. For me, tutoring is the window through which those two views can begin to open up to each other. My experience as a tutor allows me to anticipate the things that students are likely to struggle with so that I can acknowledge and address them in the classroom. Sometimes even that simple act of acknowledgment can provide encouragement for students who might otherwise believe that they are the only ones who struggle with a particular concept. 

Whether we are working on problems from the student’s instructor or on questions I have specifically constructed to require my student to tap into and reinforce a multi-layered collection of ideas, I ask students to make predictions about the products of chemical reactions, design synthetic routes for specified target structures, use the arrow-pushing formalism to illustrate possible reaction mechanisms, and explain nuances of molecular behavior based on differences in chemical structure. By continually encouraging them to use explanations based on fundamental principles and by scaffolding this way of thinking during our time together, my students are supported in their use of expert-like, higher order thinking skills. 

as a way to help facilitate their deeper and more effective understanding. As I become more aware of who my students are and what they already know, I also become more effective at teaching them. 

My years of experience as an instructor also inform my tutoring, allowing me to anticipate how the concepts that students encounter in the classroom translate into problem-solving and potential exam questions. The key to bridging that gap is to have ample and appropriate practice. In addition to whatever resources relevant to their particular class that a student might have available, I can provide the students that I tutor with almost unlimited resources for practice in the form of problem sets and exams that I have developed. 

After all, it is the student who must recognize what they need to do on an exam. Regardless of how well a student may be prepared by a tutor, they are the ones that must sit and take the exam and be able to draw upon the concepts and ideas necessary to answer questions. Ultimately, the kind of practice and skill building that I provide is what develops their abilities as critical thinkers.   

This critical thinking ability in turn leads to their increased comfort with the material and confidence in themselves, which is reflected in their exam performance. When my students succeed, I am just as delighted as they are by their growth. They can tell that I genuinely care about them as individuals and am deeply invested in their success.