Personal Description:

I grew up in Southern Ontario, in grade school my favorite classes were English and Art, but I was also proficient in all grade school subjects as well. I took part in accelerated learning programs starting in SK and continued with those programs until grade 3. These programs involved learning subjects like Math and Reading with the grade ahead of me. I graduated grade school with the Proficiency Award and entered into high school with the intent of continuing my education in the academic level classes. Some of my elective classes during high school included History (grade 11 History up until the 15th century, and grade 12 World history after the 15th century), Vocal Class (learning music theory, music history and exercises and techniques to advance vocal range), Tech Design (Introduction into AutoCAD, understanding of steps and guidelines to design) as well as Creative Writers Craft (exploring different writing styles and analyzing writing techniques used in literature). I graduated high school on honor roll and was accepted into the English and Creative Writing program at the University of Windsor.
After two years of University I made the difficult decision to move from Windsor to Ottawa in search of more job opportunities and reevaluate what I was looking for in terms of my education. For the past four years I've been gaining experience and knowledge in business through working with the hopes of returning to school to complete my education. In the time since then I've come to understand how important a thirst for knowledge is to have within the classroom setting but also outside of the classroom, and how much we are capable of learning as long as we approach each experience with ambition and an open mind. Learning has always been a passion of mine and I've found that it has always lead to opportunities, and teaching offers us the chance to give the gift of opportunities to others.

Tutoring Experience:

My teaching experience began when I started working with a local theater company during the summer months of my high school years. Each summer the theater company put on a musical production featuring children from about ages 4 - 12. In this setting I assisted in script readings, activities such as lunches and play time, as well as ensuring the children understood their roles and responsibilities not only in the production itself but also in terms of what their responsibilities were to themselves in regards to doing the best that they could. Community theater is kind of magical in a way that nothing is expected of you past making sure you do the best that you can, and for each child that can be drastically different. Some children's successes looked like making it through the whole day without missing their parent, others looked like finally remembering that one line they kept forgetting, and for some it was successfully playing the lead role. No matter how minor the accomplishment seemed on the outside, on the inside those accomplishments really were all the same for each individual child and at the end of the day succeeding at whatever the challenge was, was the ultimate accomplishment. As the theater company grew and I gained more experience I was also hired to teach smaller weeknight classes geared towards developing children's understanding of theater on a deeper level and exploring story telling in different ways. Each week we would tailor our stories and activities depending on the age group of the children. For younger age groups it would involve hearing a story, playing dress-up and doing a craft. These were ways to engage the child in the story and develop their imagination. In older groups, we could use the same story but instead of focusing on dress-up and crafts, we would focus on helping the child visualize what a character would be wearing, what mannerisms they would have as well as encouraging the children to create a scenario that the character would partake and write monologues or quick scenes to further encourage creative thinking and problem solving.
In the years since leaving the job I had at the community theater I've carried the lessons I learned from teaching there with me into my adult life. In the position at my most recent job a large aspect of it was training new associates and I've found the best way to get results was to tailor my teaching towards how best each new person learned. Some associates were much more visual learners and benefited most from physically taking part in completing a task as opposed to hearing how to complete it and then being left to complete it on their own. Others were much better at retaining information given to them verbally and were comfortable being left to complete tasks on their own without needing much guidance. I've also learned another important aspect of teaching is checking in. Setting goals and objectives are an important part in encouraging learning but also checking in is vital as well because it gives to opportunity to praise successes as well as correct any mistakes before they result in a failure.
These experiences is what makes tutoring and teaching so valuable to me. Education and learning are such an important part in not only having a successful career and future but also an important part in furthering ourselves as individuals, and tutoring allows individuals who require a bit more time or guidance to understand a concept the chance to develop further than they would have if not given that opportunity.

Tutoring Approach:

When it comes to tutoring my approach heavily involves listening and asking questions to fully understand where the misunderstanding lies and how to best offer my support and come up with a plan in order to achieve the goals set by the student, the parents/caregivers, teachers as well as myself. Learning can look so different from one individual to another that the best approach for tutoring has to be flexible in order to meet the needs of each individual student based off what their individual learning style is.