Tippy

I am a certified ESOL teacher and have been a Science, Math and Reading tutor since 2012. I have a Bachelor's degree in Clinical Laboratory Science from Virginia Commonwealth University. I have been tutoring virtually since 2018 and have experience with Pre-K through College and Adult Learners in STEM topics as well as Phonics and Reading.

Tutoring Style

I am a vibrant an engaging multi-subject tutor who is able to grow with your learner. I am able to relate Math, Science, and Reading topics to each learner's interests and am highly adaptable to special needs and considerations. I am able to pull and create custom resources as needed and employ appropriate motivational tools for students who need a little spark to get started. I am extremely patient and believe scaffolding is the key to understanding anything. I warm-up with a review of key skills to build confidence and fluency in every topic.

Success Story

Science

I worked virtually with a small group of high school biology students on a remedial path as a co-educator during lockdown. In this role I learned that a key challenge with high school students not succeeding in science was simply giving up before they begin. Science brings about new vocabulary and there is a lot of anxiety around looking at a question and feeling like it is all jargon. My focus when tutoring science is dissecting new vocabulary to make science more approachable, connecting concepts to relevant examples, and encouraging students to focus on what they know rather than what they don't know. We connected topics like the Scientific Method to questions students might have in their real lives like "Will buying a certain type of shoe help me run faster?" and improved their interest and retention of the material. All of the students who attended science remediation with me greatly improved their test scores and behaviors by the end of the year.

Math

One of my greatest tutoring successes was an 8th grade Math student who was getting F's in class and needed a lot of support to turn her grades around. At first she was not keen on opening up and receiving help but we built a bond and she was able to confide in me that she felt that during lockdown she did not learn a lot of things she should have learned. We realized she was relying on calculators to do multiplication and other basic operations and she was not allowed to use a calculator on her tests. We incorporated re-learning multiplication skills and working with negative integers and rational numbers into our tutoring sessions while keeping up with the current coursework. She was able to receive a 100 percent on a test which led to receiving a most improved award for math and raised her grades to a B. Most importantly she didn't feel like she had to live with the feeling of not knowing something she "should" have known and was able to graduate the 8th grade and move on to high school.

ELA

I worked one-on-one with a 6th grade student with dyslexia who was very self conscious about his reading level. He was not able to decode 3-4 letter words before we started working together. We used some Orton-gillingham materials to develop a curriculum for him that worked and I tailored lower grade reading material to reflect his social maturity to ease his self-consciousness. We worked patiently through his frustrations and he was able to read full stories by the end of the year which mom said he was never able to do before.