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Louis M.

Tutor's Personal Statement: I am a dedicated, resourceful, innovative, and goal-oriented educator with an unwavering commitment to each of my students in the developmental areas of social, academic, and personal growth. I feel that I have a strong aptitude to adapt well to change utilizing a strong ability to be versatile with a differentiated approach to learning, ensuring that every child’s learning style and ability is addressed. I have a lot of experience with teaching children in a one-on-one situation and have been successful with improving academic and social skills. In addition to that, I have the ability to reach children not only on an academic and social level, but on a personal level. I cannot remember a child that I have ever worked with that did not feel completely comfortable with me. I do have a have a soft spot for those children that need additional assistance. I feel I have the ability to reach those children and give them a sense of confidence which is in part, a large part of the problem for any struggling student. I have offered my own time as a teacher during my lunch periods and office hours to help a child that may be struggling in a particular area. I have also sacrificed a lot of my time outside of the normal school day to visit with children to provide them with further assistance.

Experience with Special Needs Situations: My experience with special needs students has been extensive. I have more than seven years of experience with special needs situations. I have worked collaboratively with special education teachers and have created specialized and differentiated curriculums and lessons for special education clusters of children. Regarding my teaching style with special needs children and in special needs situations, I am a professional and structured, yet I am a compassionate and flexible individual with a strong talent for developing motivational and inspiring hands-on lessons, projects, and activities that captivate the imaginations and interests of children. I have also been successful with preparing special needs children for state examinations. All of my students, both regular education and special education have always been prepared for the next level of their education. I would like to share two specific situations I specifically remember in which I was able to help two students that were in my special needs cluster. Situation 1:I remember a student I had a couple of years ago and he was struggling with language arts skills, especially spelling. I learned that this child had the ability, but just wasn’t interested in this particular subject. After working with this child, I became aware that this child simply needed to be motivated and stimulated to become a better student, especially in the area of language arts. I started to devise a plan to reach this student and bring him to the next level. I knew that he was a huge baseball fan and loved the Yankees, so I started by creating a list of spelling words that pertained only to baseball and the Yankees. When I told him that his weekly spelling words were going to be about baseball, he became 50% more excited and much more motivated. Realizing that children need to be stimulated in the right environment, I created an atmosphere where the boy and I role played and fantasized about being on the Yankees and transformed a traditional educational setting into a sports setting. I had him close his eyes and pretend he was batting for the Yankees with the sounds of the stadium all around him facing the Boston Red Sox. We used props to further create the mood. I told him that each ball pitched to him will come after he spells one of the words correctly. To make a long story short, he spelled all of the words correctly and I made sure the words were not simple words. Most of them were multi-syllabic words. He soon gained the confidence that he was actually a good speller and that was his biggest obstacle. Once he knew that, he became a very strong speller. The ability was always there. It was just a matter of having him discover that ability in a setting that allowed him to do that. I used the same type of strategy with him in other academic areas and utilized it with other students. Situation 2: I specifically remember working with a child that struggled in many academic areas. I began working with this child in the morning before school and utilized many different strategies. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to be working. This intrigued me so I started to dig a little bit more and try to get a sense of what this child was interested in, his likes and dislikes, and his home study habits. Upon doing my research, I realized that he was not getting the support at home and it wasn’t because his parents didn’t want to help or didn’t care. It was because there were some other obstacles that were getting in the way. This particular student’s parents did not have much schooling beyond high school and just didn’t grasp a lot of the material that was coming home. I became determined to not only help the child, but to give the parents some additional help as well. Instead of simply tutoring the child, I had his parents come in and sit in on our sessions. This gave the parents the understanding of what we were doing in school. This helped the child and the parents. As a result, the home study habits improved and he was now given support not only in school, but at home as well. In time, this student’s performance improved dramatically. I feel that was one my best accomplishments as an educator. I hope that I have addressed this topic thoroughly.

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