I graduated from Cornell University with a BA in Mathematics and a 3.9 GPA. I have three years of experience tutoring middle school and high school students in all levels of math, from pre-algebra to calculus. I have been trained in tutoring techniques by my university's math department outreach program and by the college-preparatory program Upward Bound. When I begin to work with a student, he or she is usually struggling with one particular assignment. However, I find that the problem is not limited to the one assignment, but rather began several lessons ago with a misunderstanding of that lesson's concept. My method is to work backwards with the student to find where the original misunderstanding took place. Then from that point, we work forward. For each lesson, I tell the student the concept they must master. Then I provide drill after drill to practice the concept. At the end of those drills I provide the student with several atypical examples which cannot be done by following a pattern, but must instead be solved using a theoretically-driven understanding of the concept. Finally, I ask the student to explain the concept in his or her own words and how it relates to concepts from earlier lessons. This method, I have found provides the student with the most holistic understanding possible and the ability to practically apply such understanding.