Jamie

Hi, my name is Jamie. Thanks for taking the time to look at my profile.

Tutoring Experience

I graduated secondary school in Scotland, obtaining 4 A grade Advanced Highers (A Levels) including Maths and Physics, before going on to study for an integrated Masters in Physics (MPhys) at the University of Edinburgh, where I obtained a first class degree.

During my secondary and university education I gained experience tutoring other students in a variety of subjects, including successfully supporting a previous early school leaver to obtain suitable qualifications required to study for an undergraduate degree in nursing.

In the last 9 years, I have been working as a software and infrastructure engineer, primarily within the setting of business to business consulting. While this has meant that I have been less in touch with the relevant secondary education curriculum in recent years, it has allowed me to hone my mentoring skills - my role has frequently been centred around educating client engineers, including those with neurodivergent traits, and supporting the development of a client's business as they look to modernise and optimise their technological solutions.

Tutoring Approach

As a tutor, I take pride in my ability to offer support in a patient manner, understanding that everyone learns in a different way and that tailored support is necessary to help someone obtain their potential. I focus on helping people develop practical solutions that work for them - the best solution is not the one that the book teaches you, but the one that makes sense to you.

I very much prefer face to face interactions. I believe this allows much more dynamic and reactive interactions, that allow us to pivot around specific pain points as required. While I would be prepared to offer online support as necessary, this would be as a secondary delivery mechanism.

In terms of lessons, I very much prefer to focus on what the student needs rather than delivering arbitrary content - I don't believe a tutor should be used in place of a full time teacher or in place of self guided learning as it simply isn't the best way to get value out of our hands on time. I generally find that having the student identify areas that they need support with ahead of a session is a great approach, as it allows me to prepare material if necessary.

My ideal session would be to work through a selection of practical exercises as a means of identifying potential gaps in understanding. I would then aim to provide a range of alternative perspectives to view the gap from, before helping the student identify an approach that makes sense to them. I also like to provide support from first principles by reenforcing understanding around a subject area such that solving problems becomes less of an exercise in memory work, and more an exercise in the practical application of well understood concepts.

With all that being said, I am by no means rigid and I would certainly be prepared to have a chat about what sort of support you are after. If I can provide that support in a proficient manner, then I'd be happy to do so.

If the above sounds appealing then I would love to have a chat to see if I could be a good fit for your needs.