Information About Mark - Ballaghaderreen tutor

Personal Description:

I am a semi-retired teacher from England. I qualified as a teacher in 1986, from the University of Bristol, UK. My school and University education was primarily towards maths and the physical sciences (not the life sciences). I have taught in a variety of school types: secondary, mixed, single-sex, comprehensive, grammar, tertiary colleges, sixth-form colleges and private colleges. I have also maintained a steady programme of private tuition for the last 40 years, with most of my work over the last 2 years being online. My most recent teaching experience was in the city of Oxford, working with a private sixth-form college which took in primarily students from overseas, most of them coming from Asia or the Middle East.

Tutoring Experience:

My first teaching job was in Cheltenham, UK, where I rose to become Head of Physics Department. I then became a supply teacher in Gloucestershire and worked in many schools, some at short notice. In 1998 I took a job as Physics teacher in a girls' private school in Bristol and stayed until 2006. After a couple of short-term contracts I worked as a Chemistry Lecturer in Cirencester College, UK. Finally, I moved to Oxford in 2009 and worked with three private colleges, finally working as Head of Physics at a private sixth form college in the city, where I remained until retiring in Summer 2021.

Approach to Grinds:

The personal one-to-one situation offers a golden opportunity for (1) the tutor to get to know the student very well and very quickly, thus enabling a detailed and tailored approach to the particular needs of the student; (2) for the student to ask, in the absence of any peer pressure or distractions, the kind of questions which he/she has been desperately wanting to ask all along. With the aid of CAD software and LaTeX typesetting, materials can be prepared at short notice and sometimes in real time - and in direct response to a student request. Schedules, work plans, targets etc can all be negotiated between student and tutor so as to bring out the best result for the student. A programme of lessons is treated as a partnership, with tutor and student working together to achieve their respective goals. Communication, discussion, delivery is conducted without condescending or demeaning, but instead by encouraging a student to think, to learn and to explore the subject with curiosity.