Bio

An Experimental Physicist with a passion for learning and teaching and sharing both with others. I have personal working experience in several areas of Experimental Physics, including Synchrotron/Material Physics and Space/Upper Atmosphere Physics. My Synchrotron/Material Physics experience comes from the undergrad research I performed at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, which is Canada’s national synchrotron light source facility. My experimentation was focused on the development and stability of graphene on various surfaces/substrates.

However, my Master’s thesis focused on Geospace and Upper Atmosphere Physics. I performed round-the-year in situ observations of the ionosphere, a layer of quasi-neutral plasma in the Upper Atmosphere. My experiment involved using a satellite to record how ground-sourced radio waves were altered by passing through the ionosphere. Imagine a huge Geometric Optics experiment where the lens is unknown, fluid, nonuniform, ever-changing, and 100 kilometers away.

I am in love with learning, and even out of school, I find it hard to stop. In my spare time recently, I have learned new languages, especially ones that don’t use the Latin Alphabet, such as Russian, Korean and Arabic.

Teaching Experience

• Four years of Teaching and Lab Instructor positions as a grad student to introductory and intermediate undergrad physics classes
• Personal and paid one-on-one tutor to both undergrad physics and IB curriculum math and physics students
• Science Camp Counsellor to youth age 8 to 14

What is your teaching philosophy?

In my experience, I prefer to treat students as equals where we can both be comfortable learning and exploring a subject. It is my responsibility to learn where students are struggling in a topic as it is to create an upbeat and healthy environment for them to learn and ask questions.

What might you do in a typical first session with a student?

Step to me will always be to get to know the student. What kind of leisure activities do you like? What classes do you prefer in school? Knowing where a student comes from in their thought process will help both of us understand each other and more easily communicate about the school topic at hand. Then we can delve into where the student is standing with the school subject, what they know so far, and what they most particularly want help with.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

When it comes to school subjects you are struggling with, I want to break things down into simple building blocks. This is so that a student can fit together the pieces to solve and understand any further complexity in the topic. Once you have all the pieces at your fingertips, the next step will be to practice fitting these pieces together in different ways so that you can get comfortable using your knowledge and understanding to the best of your abilities.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Offering and friendly and understanding environment in teaching will be the strongest goal. There are no bad answers in my teaching. Getting a question or problem wrong only helps us both learn where to focus our attention.

If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?

I would ask them to talk more. To pretend like I’m the student and they are teaching me. I know it is often hard to speak about topics you are unfamiliar with. However, one of the best ways to help understand anything is to speak out loud about it, no matter how unsure or shy you are.

How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?

Breaking things down into the bare building blocks helps students at any level of understanding or comprehension. This is as true for students with high marks as it is for struggling students.

What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?

When the student speaks out loud more, they can more easily form significant comprehension about the topic at hand. This was often my own strategy in helping myself when studying topics I had trouble with.

I also find that truly believing a student is a smart individual helps tremendously. In some cases of my teaching, I like to give the student a small explanation of a slightly higher level related topic. The student will very frequently understand this deeper explanation significantly more, helping them learn the current subject.

How would you help a student get excited/engaged with a subject that they are struggling with?

Explain the real-world significance of the subject. Topics I felt unmotivated towards in school were always topics I had little connection with. Learning why a topic is important to learn would help motivate me to delve deeper and understand more.

What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?

I will use the techniques that typically worked well for. I am a very visual learner, so visual aid will be my most preferred technique to use. I will also be using inquiry-based instruction to assist a student in being most communicative. And I believe a student speaking out loud in any capacity is the strongest motivator in assisting learning.

How do you build a student’s confidence in a subject?

I use affirmative action in supporting a student’s responses to questions. The student’s answer to a question will never be told that it is “wrong.” I prefer to branch from a place that the student already knows, affirm their confidence in this and related topics they know to form the foundation of our tutoring session in topics they feel they struggle in.

How do you evaluate a student’s needs?

I typically start by asking questions and by listening. I am a very active listener who will keep leading the student into talking more and more about a topic even if they are unsure of their knowledge of the topic. From a long conversation about what they know, I can learn a lot about where the student stands or whether they need more knowledge, understanding, or practice in the subject.

How do you adapt your tutoring to the student’s needs?

Sometimes a student is not as easily progressing in my preferred tutoring style as expected. When this occurs, I will shift gears by asking how they typically prefer to study for school. My ideology of mutual communication and understanding can be adapted to any study, including one’s methods I do not prefer. However, whatever method feels smoothest or best for the student will always be the right path to take.

What types of materials do you typically use during a tutoring session?

I prefer to freely draw or write on a blank document to depict and focus on individual problems more clearly. Sometimes these are made by me before the session, and sometimes these are made during the session; both serve in different forms of understanding of the subject matter. This is accompanied by the official course documentation provided by both myself and the student.

Teaching Skills