Jackie

I am a certified mathematics teacher with 15 years of classroom teaching experience, and 4 years of online teaching/tutoring experience. I specialize in mathematics, but I am also fluent in Spanish, and am skilled in the sciences, so I offer tutoring help in each of those areas.

Tutoring Style

I like tutoring in particular because it gives me more focused time with a single student. This allows me to learn about the student as I teach them; I can learn what their particular needs are, and how best to cater my style to them. Some students need to hear the same thing and repeat it 10 times in the exact same way before they understand it; meanwhile, some students need to be shown the topic in a highly visual way, rather than just being told; others need it to be connected to a previously learned topic so they can scaffold new knowledge on top of old. There are so many different ways that I like to support and help my students, and it all depends on what works best for them.

Success Story

Math:

I had a particular student who had difficulties learning in a traditional classroom. He frequently was in trouble with his teachers, and when he came to me he was weeks behind in his assignments, and he was failing Algebra. What seemed at first to be an inability to understand basic concepts and an unwillingness to learn was actually an inability to focus for long periods. I taught him a few coping mechanisms (including the use of a fidget toy), and within a few weeks, he was making significant improvements; not only was he catching up and completing more assignments, but by the end of the year, he had a 98 in his Algebra I class!

Science:

One of the students I’m most proud of worked with me for Physics. He was really stuck—not because he didn’t understand the material, but because he was overwhelmed by how much information he had. When I looked through his notes, I realized he actually had everything he needed; he just didn’t know how to find it.

So I turned each session into a kind of scavenger hunt. Instead of giving him answers right away, I’d ask, “Where in your notes have you seen this before?” or “What does the textbook say about this idea?” Little by little, he started to recognize patterns, organize his materials, and look for connections on his own.

He did need help with the Physics concepts, but what really made the difference was helping him learn how to research, sort through his resources, and trust that he had the tools to work things out. Within a short time, he was doing really well in the class—and he didn’t need me for much longer after that. That’s always the goal: supporting students until they feel confident working independently.

Spanish:

I once worked with a student who was moving from Spanish II into Spanish III. His conjugations and vocabulary were solid, but his writing wasn’t quite at the level it needed to be. So over the summer, we focused on building both his conversation and his writing skills.

We’d start by talking in Spanish about something familiar—usually his holiday travels or day-to-day activities. Then we would turn that conversation into a written piece. The goal was to show him how to add detail and color to his writing. He had all the vocabulary he needed; he just hadn’t been using it to expand and enrich his sentences.

So we essentially kept a summer journal in Spanish. After each first draft, we went back and fleshed it out with prepositional phrases, descriptive details, and more complex structures. By the end of the summer, his writing had grown noticeably stronger, and he entered Spanish III with much more confidence.