My Experience

I spent about 15 years teaching literature and composition, most of it at the university level as I worked on my English PhD. There were a few years on each end spent teaching middle and high school students, and that was some of the most fun I had as a teacher.

I got a PhD because I love reading and talking about books. What I discovered as a teacher is that not only do I love reading and writing, I love helping students think critically and find their own voice.

Tutoring Philosophy

Writing

Every year, every semester, I had students, including undergraduates, who were surprised to hear me talk about writing as a skill they could develop, rather than a gift one either had or (more likely) hadn’t. It’s hard to imagine the collective sigh of relief when I would point out that it made no sense to assume you could do something, especially something as complex as literary criticism, before you had learned how.

Meaning and arguments do not, of course, leap Athena-like fully formed from one’s head, but must be mulled over, poked and prodded, taken apart and put back together. I work with students to dissect sentences, and examine the structure of paragraphs and thesis statements. As a tutor, a big part of my job is to train students to pay as much attention to their own language as they do to that of the authors they study (or authors they love, independent of school). Students construct and analyze arguments while at the same time considering how their use of language affects or determines the structure, effectiveness—and ethics—of those arguments.

Standardized tests

Preparing for the variety of standardized tests by which students are now confronted requires a different approach.  That approach starts with understanding the purpose of the test and the context in which a decision-maker is looking at scores. Practice is important, but it’s not particularly valuable without understanding the logic by which the tests are created and organized — or, in other words, what it is the test-taker is being asked to do in each section.

In addition to preparing for the various verbal sections, of course, it’s important to be ready for the written portion of the test. Writing under pressure can be stressful; it’s much less so if you know what to do when you get to that section. As with all essay prompts, whether they’re on a standardized test or a college application, the first job is figuring out what you’re being asked to do.