Personal Description:

I’m a student-oriented tutor who uses a peer-based approach and a focus on facilitative learning to help students develop greater proficiency and confidence in their academic communications and project organization skills. Sometimes you have a project that you need to do, but you don’t have anything to say about your topic. I can help with that. Sometimes you have something you want to say, but you have no idea how best to say it. I can help with that too.

I have been tutoring professionally for the past 10 years, and I have a BA with honours in Religious Studies from Saint Mary’s University and a degree in Paralegal Procedures from Maritime Business College. I enjoy kayaking, wildlife rescue, and playing French horn in a wind quintet whenever there’s no pandemic on.

Tutoring Experience:

For 7 years I was a senior tutor at the Saint Mary’s University Writing Centre, where we chose to interpret “writing” as broadly as possible. As a result, I have experience working on a wide range of academic communications, including essays, theses, reports, executive summaries, artist statements, presentations, exhibit posters, promotional materials, resumes, applications, professional letters/emails, and blog posts. I served students and professors from faculties of Arts, Business, Science, Engineering, and Fine Arts, so familiarity with a range of writing conventions was essential.

I spent several years there as the coordinator for the Writing Help Online program where students completed tutorials on composition, grammar, and discipline-specific skills and could receive personalized feedback on practice submissions. Along with workshops and presentations, I was also responsible for designing and overseeing the Writing Centre’s annual Summer Writing Workshop, a three-day overnight camp for new high school graduates to practice academic skills before starting university. Making essay writing fun in the middle of the summer was a challenge that I looked forward to every year!

I have been working privately with university students across Canada since 2017, and with secondary students attending SelfDesign Learning Foundation in Vancouver, BC since 2019. Many of the students that I work with face some form of learning obstacle (e.g. a learning disability, twice-exceptionality, recent arrival in Canada, or adult responsibilities), and meeting online is great because it lets us tailor our sessions to their lifestyles.

Tutoring Approach:

Attitude is everything when it comes to improving any skill, and no one wants to put effort into something that feels irrelevant or inaccessible. I’ve had my best results when I meet learners where they are and we work together to improve in the ways they feel are useful. We usually start by discussing the needs that brought them to a tutor and reviewing past work to get a baseline of their skillset. From there we can identify specific goals and create a plan broken into manageable pieces. Skills are learned with a focus on their relevance to the student’s goals, and they are honed with practical application on current projects.

In my experience, every student has some unique insight they can bring to a topic, whether they realize it at first or not. As students, scholars, and writers, once we have an idea we feel is worth sharing, a tough project quickly changes from something we have to do to something we get to do. The trick, though, is passion for the project. My role is to understand the world through the learner’s lens and find the common space between what is asked of them and what they want for themselves. I have had much success in finding and cultivating that passion.

With a deep knowledge of academic communication and 10 years worth of tutoring experience, I am well prepared to guide a student through whatever project might be in front of them.