Sara E.

I earned by IB Diploma in the year 2022, and have been accepted into dental school at the same year. Currently, I am a fifth year dental student. I discovered my interest in tutoring right after I finished the IB program, I found myself helping younger students finish their assignments, and later, tutoring students from around the world in my two of my best subjects, IB English and IB Arabic, in which I scored 6 and 7, respectively. I tutored 5 students so far, which might not seem like much, but I always tend to remain with my students for as long as needed, and that involved the entire academic year for most of them. Recently, I found myself leaning towards tutoring Biology as well, due to the syllabus change of 2025. Most of the IB curriculum seems to align with my studies in dental school, which is why it feels like tutoring IB Biology would also be a good option.

I have 3 years' experience of tutoring. I have tutored IB English A: Literature, IB English A: Language and Literature, IB Arabic B and IB Arabic A: Language and Literature. However, I am always the sort of friend to teach their colleagues anything that they don't really understand. Hence, my teaching experience goes way back, approximately 2 to 3 years before I started tutoring professionally. Since I also tend to break down any topics in dental school that are harder to grasp to my friends and colleagues, I find myself capable of tutoring IB Biology, especially with the change of the syllabus.

I believe that there is not a "one size fits all" strategy. Teaching should be more personalised; it should be done by identifying the student's weaknesses first and then working on them. For languages, I tend to focus on the reading, listening, speaking and writing skills of the student; every class will be focused on at least one of them. As for teaching Biology, I tend to spend 50% of the duration of the class breaking down the content, and the rest of the time is spent on solving either past paper questions or questions that I personally make to test the student's understanding.

I, moreover, consider myself a very patient tutor who uses a plethora of ways to ensure the student's comprehension. This usually encourages students, especially those with anxiety or younger in age, as they are more likely to need reassurance and feel comfortable in making mistakes; therefore learning.