Janet M.

Creative, Holistic Tutor, Specializing in Reading, Writing and Art

Creative, Holistic Tutor, Specializing in Reading, Writing and Art

I'm Janet! I graduated from Northern Arizona University with a BA in Education. I also have graduate credits in education and art from Arizona State University. I specialize in holistic approaches to reading and writing, where the emphasis is on honoring the student's passions, ideas and curiosity. I have ten years experience teaching in Montessori schools, three years experience teaching MYP art, two years experience teaching ensemble playwriting and two years experience homeschooling athletes who were training for the Olympics and the X Games. I also developed elementary, middle school and high school art curriculum for Wonderspaces, an interactive art gallery.

As a tutor, I engage students by utilizing intriguing literature or writing topics. With small children, the session often begins with a drawing. The child then writes about the picture they have drawn, reads what they have written, then re-writes the work with correct spelling and grammar. In essence, this becomes a "published work". The student learns writing, reading, spelling and grammar as a unified whole and with personal meaning attached to the lesson. Older students read literature, respond with creative writing and compare their ideas to those in a text. As with the younger children, their writing is copy-edited and "published" with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. More complex ideas and concepts are explored based upon age and ability level. From the perspective of International Baccalaureate and Montessori, emphasis in all lessons is on global thinking and the understanding of a universal concept applied to a specific situation.