I've worked successfully as a tutor for GCSE and A-Level students for a number of years now, helping them drastically improve their grades. I've also done considerable work as a university supervisor and mentor for undergraduate, master's, and first-year doctoral students at the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and other institutions. My approach is mainly trust based, my students are often amazed by just how much they can do for themselves if they're in a learning environment that isn't adversarial, oppressive, or plain dull. Beyond A-Level, I also have teaching experience at the University of Oxford as a tutor and seminar leader for undergraduate history and sociology students, and I have degrees in both Archaeology and History. My background of experience is technological, and I work as a civilian consultant to the NASA Ames Human Factors laboratory in that capacity. Central to my approach is an understanding that my students are people, with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and abilities, which need to be nurtured and supported in order to get the best possible results.
In this way, learning can, and should be of a reciprocal exchange of ideas, and by embracing this in a more relaxed and curiosity-driven approach, it becomes far easier for many to explore, absorb, and abstract their understanding of both the surface learning of school qualifications, and the deep learning of the concepts behind them crucial to getting the very highest grades.
Over the past two years I have tutored students regularly in Latin, Ancient Greek, Classics, English Literature and Essay writing. I am familiar with the OCR syllabuses for Latin, Greek and Classics both at GCSE and A-level, and have developed my own resources designed to tackle set texts, unseen passages, translation from English into Latin/Greek and to reach the required level of grammatical understanding. I have also tutored a pupil for Latin IB, including the research dossier. During university, I took up Latin and Ancient Greek from scratch, so I can vividly understand the frustrations and difficulties which arise when learning Ancient languages. This has made me explore alternative methods of learning vocabulary and improving grammar through texts, rather than tables.
I have tutored pupils who need to gain top grades to take up their Oxbridge offers, and pupils struggling at school in need of extra support. As such, I develop my resources and teaching methods depending on the individual needs, aims and interests of the students. I am able to provide exam-style passages, vocabulary tests and writing tasks if desired.
During my final year of University, I volunteered in a local primary school on a programme called 'Literacy through Latin', teaching latin to a group of year six pupils, particularly those eligible for pupil premium. The project aims to use Latin to improve literacy, and so I developed latin games, exercises and creative projects. For this project I received training from the Kings College London education department.
In addition to these regular students, I have tutored pupils for competition essays, including those for the St John's College Oxford prize and the Mary Renault Prize, encouraging high-achieving pupils to think creatively and write fluently. I also have experience tutoring a mature graduate Psychology student in essay writing skills, helping them to improve their writing style ahead of a final dissertation.