I tutor because I want to give students individualized support that will not only help them earn good grades, but also to find their best learning methods during their academic career journey.

While I was tutoring an 8th-grade student from Community Housing Works, a non-profit organization that offers housing to low-income families, I saw how she was struggling to solve systems of equations problems, and found out that the root cause was that she didn't understand how to work with negative numbers. I aim to teach her how to perform different mathematical operations on negative numbers by organizing a set of worksheets based on different topics. I even expanded the lessons to include order of operations and linear equations, so she feels less overwhelmed when she is reintroduced to systems of equations. Although I did not have the opportunity to work with her long enough to see the results, this experience has taught me the importance of identifying one's weaknesses when it comes to academic coaching and what steps must be done to help the student work towards mastery.

My specific coaching talent is interactiveness. I believe that learning is a two-way communication, and the only way for a coach to know a student's level is for both parties to communicate.

A positive learning environment is where students are not afraid to ask for help when they're struggling, and academic coaches are taking initiative, helping the student achieve mastery rather than just good grades.

Being a mentor means helping mentees overcome obstacles and giving them the chance to showcase their capabilities.