FEATURED TUTOR: ALYSSA
Meet Alyssa! Alyssa is one of our awesome content tutors who works with students of all ages. In addition to working as a tutor, Alyssa is also currently studying to become a psychologist. She is pictured here with her dog Beans.
How did you get into teaching/tutoring?
My background is in psychology, and I love learning about some of the reasons why we think, feel, and behave the way we do. During my sophomore year of college I started volunteering at a preschool, implementing an early intervention reading program. I witnessed the power that one-on-one teaching and adapting to different learning styles have to improve student outcomes. Since then I’ve been pursuing opportunities that allow me to share my love of learning with others. I’m currently studying to be a psychologist. In the future, I hope to provide evaluations that assess for students’ strengths and advocate for helpful accommodations.
What is your favorite thing about working at LTLS?
I’m relatively new to LTLS, but so far I’ve had an amazing experience! I love getting to know my students and incorporating their interests into our sessions. Everyone at LTLS has been so supportive and I’m thrilled to be a part of this team!
What have you learned through your work in education that you feel is most important to share?
We all have a different learning journey. No two brains operate exactly the same, so finding the strategies that help you to learn best can be challenging. My goal as a tutor is to encourage students to utilize their unique strengths and come up with creative solutions to facilitate the learning process. Helping students gain confidence in their abilities can make all the difference in their future success.
What’s something we don’t know about you?
I love hockey! Growing up, I was a huge New York Islanders fan and always loved going to games with my family and friends. I even played roller hockey for a couple years when I was younger. Now that I live in Seattle, I’m excited to have a new local team to cheer on. Go Kraken!
To read more about Alyssa, check out her bio on our "Our Staff" page.
FEATURED TUTOR: JULIA
Julia in Costa Rica with Tilly the Two-Toed Sloth
We sat down with Julia, one of our amazing math and science tutors, for an interview to learn more about her experiences tutoring, working with LTLS, and raising a baby sloth.
How did you get into teaching/tutoring?
I actually started in college, through work study. I was a receptionist and did various other jobs, but one of the things I very quickly figured out I could do was tutor other people. Sometimes I would tutor them while being a receptionist and get paid twice! I’ve also always kind of done a little bit of teaching. I’ve done a lot of craft teaching, like sewing and embroidery. When I moved to Seattle in 1996 my brother was a middle school math teacher and he suggested I be a tutor, so I promoted myself independently — basically the same way Andrea started — and I did that for almost 10 years. Eventually I discovered LTLS through some teachers at UPrep. I really felt like the people at Liddane and I shared a philosophy of tutoring. Tutors are the people who are not your parents, your teachers, or your coaches; they’re nobody who has any authority over you, but they’re totally in your corner. It’s super important to me to start out my relationship treating the students as though they are already adults: a relationship of equals and mutual respect. The students are as much the drivers of this as I am. My job is not to impose a structure on them, it's to help them find a structure that works for them.
What’s your favorite thing about working at Liddane Tutoring?
How do I pick just one? It’s so easy to just say all the people, but the truth is that it’s all the people. There is not any one person at Liddane that I don’t like. And Andrea is a phenomenal boss. Because of her, she’s built this amazing team. She’s really brilliant at managing the business and keeping all the moving parts clear. LTLS is serving the kids, the parents, the tutors, and the schools. All those entities have different needs, and Andrea is really good at actively serving all those different communities. The reason she’s done that so well is because this is a calling for her, it’s not just a job. It’s important to her that all the people are taken care of in order to serve the students. Her fundamental priority is to serve the kids, but she knows all those other pieces need to be treated just as well to do that effectively.
What have you learned through your work in education that you feel is most important to share?
Tests are not tigers. Our brains were designed to keep us safe from things that could kill us. As a consequence, in the modern day our brains respond to stress that we’re under as if the thing that we’re scared of could kill us. That’s how we evolved: the brain is trying to keep us safe. It's really important to be able to say to the brain, “I’ve got this. It's just a test, it's not a tiger — just sit down in the backseat and take a nap,” because if you’re in that stress space the only three options you have are fight, flight, and freeze. None of those options are learn. You can’t learn when you’re in a stressed out or scared space. You have to be in a place of calm, relaxed, joyful curiosity in order to learn. Liddane does a phenomenal job of making a place for students to feel relaxed and safe so they can learn.
What’s something we don’t know about you?
I raised a two-toed sloth. I grew up and lived in Costa Rica, and this was during that time. Her name was Tilly, and she loved hibiscus flowers, so on my way to work I would stop by this house that had a huge hibiscus bush, and I would pick a bunch of hibiscus flowers and I would feed them to her all day. She’d hold them from the base and eat them like an ice cream cone.
When I had her I was working at a gift shop, and baby sloths hang off of their mothers all the time. So I had her with me in a little sling while I was at work and she would hang off of me. And at home she would sleep in the bed with me. I had her with me for most of two years. Sloths do everything slowly, so it took her a long time to grow up and go back to the wild, but she did eventually leave me for good for a home in the trees.
FEATURED TUTOR: CELEENA
We sat down with Celeena, who is one of our amazing math and science tutors! Celeena is teaching a range of MentorMeet classes this summer, from Majoring in Psychology, to Fat Studies (an exploration of sizeism), to Macrame.
How did you get into teaching/tutoring?
I guess it was a serendipitous event. I wanted to go to grad school and do research, so I was at a coffee shop just applying to research positions. Through a friend of a friend, I met Nicolette (the Chicago Branch Director) at that same coffee shop, and we really hit it off. I thought to myself, “Why would I apply for research jobs when I could do something I know I like, which is working with people?” That’s how I got into tutoring. I have a passion for education, and I think that just makes tutoring really fun.
What is your favorite thing to work on with students?
I love helping students hate word problems less. I am very passionate about this because I personally love word problems. I would do them all day every day if I could, but most people I meet hate them, so I have taken it upon myself to help others hate them less. I do this by first explaining that a lot of it is psychological, and the way the questions are phrased is designed to stump you. The way to solve them is by taking them apart, because then they become a lot more manageable and less challenging. This is also a good life lesson for students: problems that seem huge and confusing are often a lot more manageable when you are able to break them down into parts and tackle them bit by bit.
What have you learned through your work in education that you feel is most important to share?
I think it's so important to instill a passion for information at a very young age. It doesn’t even have to be knowledge, just that love for continued learning. The students who I see struggling the hardest are the ones who don’t have that passion: the ones who are just forced to be there, and don't have an interest in being there. I can't force someone to have that passion, but when it’s there it makes learning so much easier and more enjoyable. I think it is harder to instill that passion as people get older. I always try to encourage students to find their passion and run with it.
What’s something we don’t know about you?
Maybe only Andrea and Monica know this about me, because I talked about this in my interview when I first got the job: I really enjoy taking care of plants. I’m starting to expand my collection lately. I used to be more focused on outdoor plants, but now I’ve gotten really into indoor plants. I don’t have a favorite plant, but I really like anything that's a string of something: String of Hearts, String of Pearls, etc. I want to have all of them, and I don’t have any!
FEATURED TUTOR: NICOLE
We sat down with Nicole, one of our amazing tutors, as well as our Test Prep Trainer, to talk about some of her experiences tutoring at LTLS, as well as what she likes to do in her spare time!
How did you get into teaching/tutoring?
I started my tutoring journey when I was very young, helping my peers in class. The earliest instance I can remember is a time in kindergarten where I was helping a boy to understand colors. I don’t remember any specifics, but I distinctly remember sitting with him when no one else did to help him with that. My mom was a teacher, and I went to school in her district, so if students were struggling, coworkers of my mom would ask me to help, and I began working with students younger than me. I knew I wanted to do something in education, but realized I didn’t want to be a teacher, so I focused on tutoring. I really like working one-on-one with students, and helping people find learning fun.
What’s a favorite story you have from working at LTLS?
One of my favorite things that has happened was with one of my students in the middle of the first quarter of this school year. He’s a 7th grader, and he managed to bring all of his grades up to A’s, but he didn’t know that yet. He was sharing his screen so we could look at his grades, and when he noticed they were all A’s, he was so excited! He said, out loud, “I feel so proud of myself right now!” It makes me feel great when people can say things like that at a young age, because that kind of positive self talk is really important. I always hope it carries through to older years.
What have you learned through your work in education that you feel is most important to share?
I think we all know (or at least we are all told) that people have different learning speeds and different learning styles, and this really gets highlighted when you get to work with people one-on-one. It’s great to get to experiment with different styles as you are trying to find the one that works for your student. It’s really rewarding to find the puzzle piece that helps things click for another person. The fact that everyone has different learning needs is something that gets repeated a lot, and can sometimes just come off as a talking point, but it's not just a talking point. Everyone has a right to learn, and to learn in a way that's not just inside the confines of what has always been done.
What’s something we don’t know about you?
I really like mining! Not in a cave with a mining cart, but the term is sort of a blanket one referring to finding minerals. My dad is really into geology, and he has some mining claims in California, and when I still lived there I would go out with him a lot. One of those claims is a really good place to find beryls - a gem that comes in all different shades, with famous ones like emerald and aquamarine - and really pretty minerals. I not only collect minerals I find with him, but also others that I find or buy. I’m just really interested in geology and I especially enjoy finding things myself. There’s something really rewarding about using crowbars to move boulders, or digging intentionally and carefully to find really small minerals.
FEATURED TUTOR: MANON
We sat down with Manon, one of our awesome math tutors, to talk about their time working at LTLS, what lead them to education, and their tutoring philosophy.
How did you get into teaching/tutoring?
For me it was a natural progression stemming from being very academically involved and enjoying doing well in school. I started tutoring peers in high school, then after high school I began working at an after school learning center. I was basically teaching a class of more than ten English students. I don‘t entirely know why they decided to give a seventeen-year-old the responsibility of making and implementing their own curriculum, but I enjoyed it! That experience was what helped me learn that I really liked working with kids and education.
What’s a favorite story you have from working at LTLS?
I feel like most of my experiences with my students are fun and funny. I spent almost an entire session about a week ago with a student trying to proofread their Excel spreadsheet and working together with them to figure out why their graph wasn’t a straight line. It was a really collaborative experience, and that’s what I enjoy. Initially neither of us really knew what was causing the issue, but we were working together to figure it out. I think stuff like that is really fun. I’ve also gotten to meet a few students’ pets, which is awesome.
What have you learned through your work in education that you feel is most important to share?
A lot of people approach teaching as if they are a full person helping other people to become full people, but really, it's more of an information exchange. As tutors, we are already dealing with full people. It’s important to have the mindset that students already have plenty of knowledge; they just need someone to help them with the process of figuring things out and building more of a foundation. As people we are always learning new things and gaining new knowledge, and a tutoring relationship, like any relationship, requires give and take; it’s not one sided. I can learn a lot from my students just like they can learn a lot from me.
What’s something we don’t know about you?
I wrote my first book when I was fourteen. It was about 250 pages long and was Attack on Titan fanfiction.