"Hello! My name is Mara, and I am so excited for the opportunity to be your tutor. I graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 2018 with degrees in both Chinese and Communication Science. After graduating, I went on to teach at the elementary school level for four years and have experience with students in grades PreK—5th grade. During my years as a teacher, I taught English Language Arts. For the younger students, this included letter and sound recognition, basic phonics skills, and print awareness. For the students in Kindergarten through 2nd grade, I helped them learn how to read and write and begin to analyze text. By third to fifth grade, the students I taught were writing correctly formatted essays in response to literary text. Two of my students even won a nationwide writing competition!

Since leaving the classroom 2 years ago, I have dedicated myself to being a full-time tutor. I have experience tutoring all ages of students, from the PreK level all the way up to adults. In general, I work with elementary-aged students on material that is supplemental to their English classes at school. With adults, I mainly tutor in ESL and Chinese as a second language. I believe that the most important part of being a tutor is catering the lessons and materials to each specific student based on their own strengths and weaknesses. Even during my time in the classroom, because I was lucky enough to have small class sizes of no more than 10 students, much of the work was personalized and differentiated. I spend a lot of time outside of lessons preparing materials and conducting research on pedagogical approaches. I bring a lot of passion and energy to my lessons, especially those with young children (I know how hard it can be to sit still)!

Thank you for considering me as a tutor. I am always open to feedback and suggestions and truly believe that at the end of the day, the strongest teacher-student relationships are PARTNERSHIPS." less...