Stephanie

My work with kids started with my own family and my four children. The best part of watching them grow was watching them learn something new. I have a bachelor’s degree in socio-cultural and biological anthropology from Southern Illinois University and I tutor grades PreK-12.

My tutoring style:

I believe two things: 1) Children who have FUN learning want to learn more and remember things better; 2) Children who can make a personal connection to the content will remember what they learned forever. I strive to do both of these things in every class.

Success story:

A five-year-old foreign student whom I met while working for an English as a Second Language company became my most repeated student because she had fun in my class and her parents were both very busy. We found we had many of the same interests (she loves unicorns and ice cream, I love unicorns and ice cream) and we used those similarities in class for her to quickly learn English. After a couple of years of seeing her several times weekly, her parents wanted to enroll her in one of the best primary schools in Beijing, but she had to pass a rigorous English test before she could enroll. We had six months to prepare and we worked really hard. By the end of our preparations, she was so fluent that she sounded better than most native English speakers. Her parents even asked me to write her recommendation letter to get into the school. She passed the test with flying colors and for the last 4 years has been the best student in her grade. I still see her weekly online and now we are preparing for an even more rigorous test that will decide which path she takes in school. Since she aspires to be a neurosurgeon like her mother and grandfather before her, we are working hard again to make sure she remains ahead of the curve. Watching her blossom over the last 6 years and being a part of the journey she’s on means the world to me. Of course, in reality, every tutoring session with every student is a success because they show up, and that alone, is the first step to having a growth mindset.