With over 20 years of military experience, I have learned to assess individuals' learning and leading requirements and adjust my working methods to optimize their success--we succeed and fail as a team. As an Army officer, I spent three years in a military schoolhouse teaching new officers and new enlisted soldiers from every walk of life and with every level of abilities, or lack thereof. My required focus was on professional skills development, leadership and oral and written communication; however, I expanded my mission and vision to include personal development. The officers and soldiers I trained are the very ones leading today's Army and completing its missions.
In that vein, children are our country's future and it has long been my personal mission to do what I can to make sure they receive the time, attention and personal development support to become exemplary, productive citizens. That has driven me to seek opportunities to work with children as much as possible. I have tutored students at all levels of their K-12 education in math, science, history, beginning Spanish, English (writing, vocabulary, grammar, content/structure) and life skills. In addition, I provide citizenship sessions and personal and professional development coaching and mentoring to a Girl Scout troop in Northern Virginia--the importance I place on working with those young women outweighs the distance I must travel to do it. While working on my MS in Project Management and Information Systems, I tutored fellow graduate students in several of the management courses and continued to tutor several students after I completed the program. As a member of the public speaking organization Toastmasters International, I achieved Distinguished Toastmaster status and ran two Toastmasters International-sponsored public speaking and youth leadership programs at a local high school.
The methods with which I work with students are individualized to the person. No one method is universally appropriate and successful for every student. I assess how a student learns and what inspires him/her to learn and structure my approach accordingly. The one technique I do almost always use is the Socratic method. Students of all ages tend to want the easy answer without the deep thought. My preference is to respond to their questions with more questions to show them a structured thought/analytical process and that they usually have the answer already or the ability to find it on their own. The most common thread to my tutoring is providing and/or reinforcing a structured approach to preparing schoolwork and solving problems--this is an essential element of test preparation as well.
My qualifications include:
- certified instructor in the Army
- wrote and published an article in a professional journal
- co-authored and presented a paper at a professional conference
- provided editing/proofreading for doctoral candidate writing his dissertation; he received his degree
- assisted student seeking experiential credit towards an undergraduate degree with writing, editing and proofreading 100+ pages of documentation and applicability of military experience; she validated courses worth 30 credit hours
- Distinguished Toastmaster (the highest level of achievement in Toastmasters International)
- Eight years as the primary information manager for a 2-star general Army command--managing the content and technical correctness of more than 6500 pieces of correspondence and policies annually, to include writing original documents and proofreading, editing and providing instruction on written and oral communication to subordinates and other staff offices
As for physical education tutoring qualifications, I was a National Junior Olympics track and field competitor and state-level competitor in cross country and track and field during high school. I was recruited for track and field and volleyball for West Point.
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