Charles

I have been fortunate enough to work a wide variety of jobs in my life from bar work to construction to hosting events - these have given me a broad breadth of experience but a background in the creative/performance arts has always led me back to acting as a primary discipline. My acting career has included one-man shows at Edinburgh Fringe, film work, voice acting, and musicals but through various routes of higher education (BA, Masters, and PGCE) I have also attempted to ensure I have pursued my own academic interests to their highest level.

I am currently working as a Youth Course Director for a theatre company in Canterbury called The Actor's Lounge where I plan a weekly workshop for 14 - 18 year olds to take extracurricular drama. In addition, I teach LAMDA classes at a school in order to continue to share my passion for acting.

Tutoring Experience

Pre-Covid, I trained and worked as an actor before teaching for the last three years to broaden my skill set and try and give back some of the academia I have been fortunate enough to receive in my life. While this is my first-time tutoring, I have worked at The King’s School Canterbury in their drama department as a TA. This experience inspired me to pursue teacher training and I was placed at Dover Christ Church Academy and had the chance to first test my classroom management skills. My second placement was The Folkestone School for Girls, where I had to have command of a wide range of subject knowledge across the years 7 - 12 I taught. I stayed on at FSG last year and continued to broaden my teaching skillset and deepen my subject knowledge, particularly as mocks and GCSE/A-Level exam preparation started.

I have therefore had experience teaching in different schooling types from private, comprehensive, and grammar, which has given me a breath of teaching experiences that have helped to teach a wide range of students from different backgrounds and ability levels or complex SEN needs. I have taught from Key Stage 3 – 5 so I am also very familiar with the GCSE and A-Level curriculums.

Tutoring Approach

My approach invites students to consider a holistic approach to the subject and encourages epistemic insight into why English content and skills are useful or relevant to real-world settings.

I centered my approach around open discussions and a fun and sociable classroom atmosphere, always with the aim of inspiring in the students a fundamental curiosity about the world – which I believe is the backbone of any academic mind (and rounded or interesting individuals). The traits of a naturally academically curious person who can develop into an autotelic learner are sadly more and more lost in our increasingly distracted world. I am also a strong believer in the importance of cultivating in students a sense of the power of their own imagination and using criticality to question the world around them.

Overall, my approach focuses on the individual student and working around what makes them tick. Not every student will like every subject, but there are ways to reach every student and make any subject enjoyable to them once that students feel comfortable communicating how they like to learn and know that they are listened to not simply spoken at. It is through this forming of dialogue that I have found students often feel the comfort and security to make mistakes and explore their interests further.