In May 2011, I graduated cum laude from Guilford College holding a Dual Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies and Comparative Religious Studies with the equivalent to a minor in Mandarin Chinese (that which is now presently being taught throughout much of the United States) - though I am a proficient speaker. As a part of my studies, I lived abroad in Yunnan Province, China - studying the language and conducting research on the various cultures present throughout the 'untamed' Southwestern region of China. Since August of 2011, I have taught at a private, secular middle school for boys in Richmond, Va. As a full-time faculty member, I teach Future Problem Solving (an interdisciplinary critical thinking and reasoning course), Community Problem Solving, Philosophy, Religion, and Chinese. In Fall 2013, my hope is to attend - through a distant education program - North Carolina State University's Geospatial Information Sciences program.
As a teacher, I have worked primarily with middle school boys; however, as a former director of and contributor to summer programs, I have experience working with the entire K-12 range.
My focus as a tutor is developing student autonomy - the ability for a student to independently tackle work and assignments - regardless of the subject (as long as the subject falls within my own expertise). In order to achieve this goal, the student and I work together to develop tools which he or she can utilize when encountering an obstacle. The goal of tutoring is to cultivate a student's self confidence and to enable them to 'troubleshoot', so to speak. My strengths as a tutor - and a teacher - lie primarily in reading comprehension, text analysis, and writing (all critical skills in subjects such as history, religion, anthropology, etc. - or, at the collegiate level what is called the 'Liberal Arts'). My tutoring instills within each student a passion for the subject, accomplished by aiding in the student's discovery of what - in education - we call "relevance" - the ability for a student to make a connection between his or her own experience and the material.
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