Teaching Philosophy

The exciting part about teaching for me is getting to know my students personally. As a tutor I get to spend time every week with each of my students. This allows me to monitor their academic progress, but more importantly, it allows me to understand what they are learning well and where we might need to focus our efforts. If my student is having trouble with a particular concept, we have the opportunity to try several different approaches until we find a way to elucidate tricky material. Doing this every week helps the student figure out how he or she is learning and how to approach problems in the future. New students are exciting and challenging, because I need to figure out how they learn best and then how to explain the material in a way that makes sense to them. From there we can work on building their knowledge base and their approach to academic learning so they can start to learn the material on their own.

And that’s the end goal of our work. Yes, we want each student to succeed and to earn high marks, but it is more important for the student to be able to tackle these problems in the future. My goal is to equip my students with the study and analytical skills so that, in time, they will no longer need a tutor. To that end, my role isn’t simply that of a tutor; I also want to be a role model and a mentor for my students. Whenever I can, I make real-world connections to their seemingly abstract subjects. As a research technician at “the Hutch” I still use the material that I’m teaching, and I show my students how it is useful so that logarithm rules or kinetic equilibria don’t seem esoteric. If I can get my students excited, or at least to understand the importance of their schoolwork, then I’ve done my job, and the rest of our work together can be as productive as possible.

Bio

A graduate from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, Ev brings a wealth of tutoring experience to University Tutoring. He has applied his calm and supportive tutoring methods in his work with students in Middle School through College in Indiana, California, Illinois and China where he taught English to college students. Intrigued by the intersection between eastern and western medicine, Ev recently began work as a research scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He is considering graduate school in acupuncture and Chinese herbs and would like to work in a practice that combines eastern and western medicine. As a tutor, he believes that "great learning occurs by doing" and he strives to "steer students toward the right line of thinking, not just toward the right answer." When he is not busy equipping students with relevant academic tools, one might find this jack-of-all-trades camping, volunteering with the Jackson Park branch of Seattle's Youth Tutoring Program, making music with friends as a bass player, or practicing qigong.

Subjects: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Math, English, Reading, Writing, History, French, Music Theory, Test Prep (PSAT/PLAN/SAST/ACT/GRE/ GMAT/MCAT)    (6 - Adult)

Resumé

Coming soon!