James Parkinson

I can tailor lessons around the individual and given the scope of lessons I cover I will need an initial lesson to gauge the ability of the student and difficulty of lessons to be provided. Following this I put together some reading and problem sets to be covered during the lesson.

Generally the format is not formal and the problems to be answered during sessions will prompt a more two-way investigation. My day job as a software engineer largely involves determining the correctness of systems built by other people. While it may seem worlds apart from teaching, one thing I have learned is to spot logical mistakes that will hinder progress later on.

Given the broad nature of the subjects I cover, if the student is at A level or above, I may not know everything we could possibly cover in such a session. There may be questions that arise that we don't have an immediate answer to. At this point the focus would be: based on the first principles we are already ware of, how could we logically find an answer. I have always found it useful to utilise this way of answering questions rather than giving an immediate answer to the student.

This was a method I learned working for the Mathnasium tutoring centre in Fulham. The aim is to encourage a curiosity for learning and not enforce a relationship involving excessive dependence on tutors/ teachers for the right answer.

Overall, my aim is to first shore up the foundations of what has been learned already, (hopefully) teach something new and encourage a lifelong desire to learn.