Shubha V

More About Me

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I’m Shubha, a graduate from the University of Chicago with a major in Sociology!
As someone who initially faced difficulties in the classroom, I developed study skills and strategies to motivate myself, and saw the results of this as I later graduated as Valedictorian of my high school class, attended a top university, and graduated with honors. Due to the improvement I noticed in myself, I have been committed to serving incoming student bodies ever since my junior year in high school, when I began tutoring fourth grade students after school in various subjects. In addition to ensuring that the concerns of their parents and teachers were addressed (homework completion, studying, concept clarification), I established trust and comfort with the students so that we could develop a study plan that would target areas of weakness. Some methods that have worked best included reviewing incorrect answers on homework assignments and exams, and then practicing similar questions outside of the assigned homework. I also categorized questions with students, so that they could understand phrasing patterns and apply this knowledge to future test taking. Furthermore, I tracked the students’ progress and communicated this with teachers and parents, so that they could feel confident in their student’s improvement. Doing so gave parents faith in me as a tutor, and this was demonstrated through the multiple pay raises I was given. In college, I found that when my professors were able to break subjects down into easy-to-understand pieces and provide multiple examples for me to learn from, my classes felt much easier and more rewarding. For example, I had a physics professor who created an entire booklet to help students remember exactly when to use any given formula based on information provided from the problem. Moreover, these professors explained topics in many different ways during class to ensure that students with all sorts of learning approaches felt confident about the material. This is a key goal in my tutoring- building confidence. I strongly believe that every student, with the right amount of work and diligence, can perform well academically. Most of the issue comes from lacking confidence in their own thought process. In my tutoring sessions, I assess the students’ weak and strong points, provide them with numerous examples to learn from, and give them templates to work off of until they feel comfortable with the material and can do practice problems on their own.

I studied Spanish for over 5 years throughout high school and college and fortunately explored more complicated topics like subjunctive usage very early on in my learning. After also studying Spanish as a foreign language grant recipient for three months in Spain, I started to feel very comfortable conversing in Spanish and speaking to Spanish culture. I currently work with students who need extra attention in their Spanish classes and encourage them to complete many exercises and practice their speaking skills during class. Throughout the course of just a week, after meeting with a student once a day for an hour, I was able to help him improve his class grade by 5%. My goal is to make sure that students don’t feel intimidated by learning a new language so that they do not fall behind in class.

I have been teaching students in standardized test subjects for 3 years. I firstly offer students a diagnostic test to see where they have weaknesses and strengths, and then devise a study plan to constantly work the weak areas while continuing to practice the strong ones. In my years of tutoring the SAT and ACT, I have been able to identify the grammar rules and reading strategies need to succeed in those sections. With each one-on-one or group class, I give students a brief lecture followed by in-class practice. After making sure the students understand the specific grammar rule or reading strategy, I give the students practice material that gets graded the next day.

For vocabulary, I make it a point to use creative devices to help students ingrain vocal words into their memory versus memorizing them for a few days. This includes focusing on Latin roots as well as antonyms, usage in sentences, synonyms, etc.

Feel free to contact me for a lesson! I’m very open minded and want to do what’s best and easiest for YOU. I take feedback very seriously and also keep communication as open as possible to make sure that I’m providing what the student truly needs.