Bedok/Chai Chee, Geylang/Macpherson/Eunos, Changi, Kembangan, Tanah Merah
Qualification
Diploma
Tuition Background
Full-Time
Tuition/Teaching Experience
I first started tutoring while I myself was a student in Singapore Polytechnic. 5 years ago, I decided to become a full-time tutor and have been doing that ever since.
I do prefer 1.5 hour, 1 on 1 lessons but I am flexible. Upon agreement, I will be able to begin immediately and as long as our lessons are consistent, I see no reason to stop teaching.
Rapport Building
I have been tutoring since I myself was a student. While I have had other jobs, tutoring is the only one that I have done consistently all these years. Currently I am in my 30s. That is many years of experience.
When I started tutoring, it was only part-time. When I first started, I was in Singapore Polytechnic. I stopped teaching for 2 years while I served my National Service in the Singapore Coast Guard but resumed once I went back out into the working world. After not being happy going to work every single day, I decided to quit my full-time job to pursue being a freelance, full-time tutor. That was 5 years ago now.
A common question I get is if I do enjoy teaching so much, why not become a full-fledged MOE teacher? Financial issues from my younger days aside, I truly enjoy the flexibility of the freelance lifestyle.
My flexible schedule can be to your advantage as well. Need to move a lesson this week to another day? If I have a slot, no problem. Want extra lessons because exams are coming up? If I have the slot why not?
I feel that learning should be a part of life, not something extra that one is forced to do. That's how I approach tutoring. Calm, relaxed but firm when I need to be.
Keeping Up with Curriculum
I have no issues with keeping up with the curriculum. As I had mentioned above, I have been a full-time tutor for 5 years now. I have seen the Primary and Secondary school curriculums shift and change.
Honestly, a curriculum is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the understanding of the subject matter. For example, if you've spent years doing one job and you're suddenly forced to switch to a completely different sector, you're not actually starting from scratch. You still have all your life experiences. Your understanding of how a workplace operates, your understanding of people's behaviours, your understanding of how technology works. Understanding the idea behind something means you will never have to start from scratch.
As a Good Tutor
Tutoring is different from being a school teacher. A school teacher teaches the way they are taught to teach. With a standard that somebody else has made up with completely no understanding of a student as an individual. That's not their fault; it's just how the system is.
Being a tutor to me doesn't mean being a teacher. Being a tutor means being a puzzle solver. Each individual student is a puzzle that I have to solve. The way I teach one student very rarely is the same way that I teach another.
More than that, being a tutor (especially at my age) probably means being the first adult outside of a child's family to have a personal relationship with that student. This is a responsibility that I do not overlook and I am very open with parents regarding any issues that their child might have.
