Ira

Certified Tutor

One of my core values can be summed up in two words: "Students First." I tell all students, online and offline, that if I am not in class or asleep, it is an office hour. I believe that it is my duty to be as accessible as possible. I believe that all of my students find comfort in the fact that there is someone they can turn to for clarification on a myriad of topics.
I also bring a firm understanding that many of our students have a great deal of responsibilities. Along with working full time and maintaining their studies many students are "sandwiched" between taking care of their children as well as caring for their parents. With this understanding comes the requirement to be flexible, patient and empathetic.
A cornerstone of my pedagogical philosophy is that I strive to help students understand difficult concepts through meaningful examples taken from their daily lives. If a student is going to take an interest in the subject matter, they are more likely to retain this information. I like to think of it as a sort of "School House Rock" approach to learning. For example, I was able to convey the microeconomic concept of the production possibilities frontier by having the students visualize a restaurant that produced two goods: salads and sandwiches. The production possibilities frontier is a simple model designed to depict the production capabilities of an economy given common resources, while assuming there are two broad classes of products, consumer goods and capital goods. Traditional economic textbooks love to use a "guns and butter" metaphor, but I have found that the salads and sandwiches example is much more effective. Students are able to quickly understand that they can use common ingredients like meat, cheese, vegetables, bread (rolls for the sandwich or croutons for the salad), and dressing to make sandwiches or salads and, in turn, maximize earnings.
Unless the student is destined to become a contestant on "Jeopardy," I do not see the value in students having a plethora of academic knowledge at the ready. It is far more important that students are information literate and that they understand what information is needed, where to find it, how to evaluate it, and how to use it in everyday life.