Axel

About Me

I am a tutor of languages with almost ten years of experience across virtually all age groups and grade levels. I teach primarily English and Spanish Language arts, including language acquisition for both languages, and I also teach cultural and political theory classes. When I'm not teaching, I am a researcher of teaching and pedagogy.

Tutoring Style

I consider myself structured, yet student-centered, and I like to give my students a wide breadth to be able to dictate the topics, themes, and at times content of each class. I like to give both students and parents clear objectives, but I believe giving the students control over how they arrive at those objectives is the most effective and personally pleasing for language arts classes. I also believe that giving students books, materials, and activities outside of the common school curriculum, where appropriate, invites students to think about their studies and their work from different perspectives.

Success Story

My first tutoring student ended up being the student I most worked with, through their middle school career, through COVID, and the first couple months of university. This was an extremely timid student when I first met him as a beginning 8th-grader, someone who could barely talk about one paragraph of a simple Harry Potter book; but over the years, with age and comfort with myself and my loose teaching style, I was able to find topics that interested him, able to style my way of talking to him that matched his own cadence and expectations, and able to challenge him with new types of books and philosophies that he hadn't been exposed to before. During his sophomore and junior years of high school, we saw growth in his literacy and critical thinking skills that no one had seen before or expected, and I credit this to our sessions and our ability to find the materials and topics (mostly politics and philosophy) that most interested him, which he hadn't been able to find in other tutoring classes or in his traditional classes. His senior year went very smoothly, in contrast to his struggles in 8th grade and underclassman career regarding his grades and motivation, and is currently excelling in university.

Hobbies & Interests

My first loves were reading and writing, and I try my very best when I'm not working to keep up with what people are printing and publishing everywhere in the world and not focus so much on the classics. I also like to learn new languages and am currently trying to autodidact my way to proficiency in some Mesoamerican languages. And when I don't feel like being intellectual, I game a lot and practice cooking pastries.

‍