I believe that education is about empowering students to take on challenges and that students are best tutored by people who aim to work themselves out of a job. As a full-time tutor since 2015, I understand the unique opportunity that college exam preparation presents. With the right tutor, test prep goes far beyond opening doors to more colleges: it encourages students to develop the critical thinking lens essential to their success as independent thinkers and global citizens.
Theory of Change from the Bottom Up
Sustainable solutions to systemic issues must occur from the bottom up. Top-down solutions are not only disempowering but also ineffective. I apply this philosophy to my work in effecting positive change in a student’s thinking. The role of a great tutor is to ensure that, over time, the student has the tools and the confidence to succeed on their own.
Questions, not answers: Investing in a Generation of Curious Minds
Shifting a student’s focus from right answers to right questions is not only a more replicable model across various contexts—from classroom, to lecture hall, to lab, to conference room, and everything in between—but it also cultivates within the student the invaluable gift of intellectual curiosity. I encourage students to view the world as their classroom and pursue what is relevant to them, so curriculum and materials are not confined to the standard test-prep regalia (in fact, some studies—and my personal experience—demonstrate that higher test scores result from a student-centered curriculum than from a curriculum designed for the test [see here, here, and here]) My students are thrust into the deep end from day one with reading assignments that span from The Sociology of Food in Spain: European Influences in Social Analyses on Eating Habits to Between the World and Me to Me Talk Pretty One Day.
I am a University of California, Berkeley graduate, with a Bachelor of Arts in Development Studies and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Economics and Policy. My approach to education has been informed additionally by my 12 years with Amigos de las Americas, an international youth leadership non-profit.
Udelson Tutoring 