Experience Summary
I have many years experience in professional training of adults in various contexts. These include telephone support and problem solving, scripted conference and web based training, small group job task training, and team leadership. I have worked with many educationally and emotionally disadvantaged young foster children at home, including my own elementary aged children requiring regular tutoring and therapy. I also volunteered for classroom teacher assistance regularly in one school. I have attended several conferences and workshops about foster and adoptive issues in parenting and education. I attended a gifted high school and tutored math there and attended college math classes with my teacher father. My first college aspirations were directed toward teaching middle school. I also taught adults jewelry arts and elementary guitar in the past.
Teaching Style
I always seek to educate by exploiting a child's natural curiosity. I first try to build trust and discover what motivates each individual student. I rarely need to use authority as a teaching tool, but much prefer to use an agreed reward system and set achievable short term goals. I like to use a scientific method allowing the student to propose the direction of study and act as a guide to learning through experimentation with several approaches to the task. I always want to be prepared to arrest frustration with a prepared alternative method of accessing the same material. I like lessons that combine subjects into integrated projects that challenge the student but are composed of small successes that eventually show the student how much they can achieve. I do not emphasize time-based skills but I hold myself to continuous improvement and measurement.