ELA Teacher and Writer

Sarah D.

I have spent the past five years as an ELA teacher in a Title I school, where I taught high school students form a variety of backgrounds including English Language Learners, students with disabilities, and honors students how to analyze literature, construct responses, succeed in standardized testing, and more. My education includes two degrees, an undergraduate degree in TESOL and a Master's in Secondary Education with a focus on English, from which I graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA while working full-time to support myself. Additionally, I spent several months teaching in China and South Korea during my undergraduate studies and worked with my university's English Language Institute to prepare foreign language speakers for the rigor of collegiate writing.

In addition to being an educator, I also write professionally. One such job includes writing educational content for an online educational content company to expand their reach to their audience. On a personal note, my poetry writing and performance was awarded third place in a paid poetry competition for poets in the Phoenix area, earning me a spot at the Arizona statewide poetry competition, and my manuscript is currently in progress.

Ultimately, helping others achieve their goals is one of my greatest passions in life, and I have found that using my skills in the area of ELA to assist students has been one of the best ways to achieve this goal. Tutoring is not only about providing scaffolded, rigorous content but also about relating to the student and providing instruction and support in language that is digestible for each student. Many tutors may be able to expand upon literary analysis or writing an essay, but not many of them are able to do so in a way that a student will truly understand and be able to remember moving forward. The success of the students is the primary concern, and I am the person best suited for that job.