Jared Standen-Grant

I started 'tutoring' people back my GCSEs when my English teacher was absent for several months and my classmates were struggling with the work. During lunch I set up an extra lesson for people to catch up, ask questions and discuss some of the ideas behind the books we were reading. I usually saw about 10 students turn up every week and I found that their improvements stemmed from a combination of the extra lesson and the encouragement to keep working hard at a subject that, for most of them, was their worst nightmare. Through the lessons I learnt a lot from what they had to say and realised that it wasn't English that I loved, it was helping them improve. I try to carry this philosophy into tutoring now, by supporting students in the lesson and guiding them on work to do outside as well.
I usually spend the first session talking through particular difficulties in Physics or Maths that a student might be facing, as well as gathering useful information such as the exam boards a student is on, their current grades and their aims for the end of the year. From there I can decide which material is best and what style of lesson might work well for a particular student. Overall, I like to keep my tutoring friendly, relaxed and specific to each person. I hope that anyone I teach can take away some valuable skills and knowledge for their subject. I don't have 20 years of teaching experience, but I do have a lot of recent exam experience with the same style of assessments that the students I tutor will and have taken. I think that's where I can offer a unique perspective on these subjects that sometimes others can't.