Tutoring
I have been employed at the BYU-Idaho Reading and ESL Center for the past seven semesters. My director, Julie Engstrom, explains some of my responsibilities and accomplishments in this letter.
As a tutor at the reading center, I have had the unique opportunity to work one-on-one with students from America and from all over the world. I have tutored students from Korea, Russia, Serbia, and Mexico.
The position has been both challenging and rewarding, as I have learned to communicate with students at all levels of English comprehension, analyze students' individual needs, administer diagnostic testing (including the Woodcock reading exam and the Jamestown reading test), encourage the students' independence and positively reinforce their learning. I have also taught study skills and problem solving so the students can learn to work on their own when the tutoring sessions have finished. I feel so much satisfaction and fulfillment when I see the "light go on" and I recognize that a student has learned something that will make their studies and their life easier and more successful.
My current students, Yana Dokhnova and Allison Browne, discuss our tutoring sessions in these letters.
I have also taught as a self-employed piano instructor. This required me to understand young children's' attention spans, as well as develop the particular patience that is necessary when working with younger children. I taught my lessons in a manner that was appropriate to the level of each student, and I worked with the child and his or her parents to customize our experience to best fit their needs. Colleen, the mother of one of my students, testifies of these things in this letter.
Especially For Youth
I have worked as a youth counselor at my Church's worldwide Especially For Youth Program. In this position, I was responsible for the safety and well-being for up to eight girls in a week. As their counselor, I was also responsible to teach them in a small-group setting nearly four times each day.
The purpose of EFY is to provide teens with a positive experience where they can feel loved, safe to express themselves, give them an increased self-worth, and to encourage them to change their lives and grow in their social and spiritual development.
My position required me to be encouraging, friendly, approachable, caring, and positive in my interactions with these teens.
Teaching
As a women's leader in my church organization, the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I was responsible for the weekly religious instruction of forty women. In addition to teaching some of the forty-five minute lessons myself, I guided the two other assigned teachers to make our lessons more effective. We created lessons that were straightforward and purposeful, yet also open to class members' comments and insights. My experience as a teacher in my church trained me to have a confident teacher's presence, be encouraging in my communication, and be open to the thoughts and ideas of the women I was teaching.
