Software engineer with 14 year's commercial experience and masters degree

I’m Thomas, a software engineer starting out in the tutoring world aiming to tutor GCSE students of all ages to build their confidence and competence so they can see computing and programming as a magical, rewarding subject to learn. I received my masters degree from Bangor University in 2011; I learned to program using the Java programming language, used today by big enterprise and banking systems, I also learnt all the non-programming aspects of computer science like algorithms and cyber security. Commercially I’ve worked both with Java and a language called PHP which is built for web programming for over eleven years.

So, why did I become a private tutor? Software developers are generally expected to move upwards to a senior role and up into management after earning their stripes; becoming management was never the goal for me, I always preferred a pure programming role. Teaching, whilst not my initial career choice has always been a passion of mine; during sixth form college I spent time as a teaching assistant at Higham Lane School, Nuneaton. One of my original aims of my career was to work in the public sector so my work would benefit others.

I aim to mold my teaching methods around students, meeting them at their confidence level; I learned most of my subject knowledge by doing but this isn’t true for all students. For non-programming areas like algorithms and networks, I feel that students get nowhere with pure memorisation, not only is it boring and tedious for the client but it makes the subject useless to them above GCSE level and beyond.