My experience as a tutor mostly stems from helping friends out in classrooms, sitting down with them after dinner somewhere and going over what they didn't understand. My other experiences involve tutoring the children of family friends over several summers, in AP subjects that were coming up the next year. During these times, we would go over the new subject chapter by chapter, I would assign problems in order to find out how each student approaches problems and find out what they don't understand through examples. I would also attempt to help them look for ways to be able to shore up their study skills and figure out how to get them to improve their looking for information when solving problems as well as retention. Though I only had two students in this matter, one of them is now a student at UCLA and the other, though we did not keep in contact, has gone to UC Berkeley like he planned.
As for myself, I am a UCLA graduate fresh out of undergrad. I was a biology major during my college career and have personally taken the MCAT and PCAT during the time. Before that, I had a diploma from the International Baccalaureate and participated in high school athletics, I played water polo and swam. Back when I attended Walnut High School, the students were very competitive about getting into college, this notion of setting oneself up for their future stuck with me, and this is where I would like to help others succeed as I have. My teaching style so far has been one on one, with observation on the methods used to solve problems, I am willing to try out a group class as well, and I hope everything works out for that kind of class and would then be willing to offer those in addition to one on one lessons.
Though understanding subject matter is important, I also feel that it is important to analyze and improve the ways that students perceive problems and to help them solve problems in general, this will lead to a greater confidence and possible willingness to work harder because they know how to approach problems.