Philip

I have been working as a GCSE science and A-level Biology teacher for the past nine years having completed my PGCE in secondary science at the University of Cambridge in 2015. So far my career has taken me to schools in Portugal, Belgium, China, Oman and most recently Thailand, where I worked as the Head of Science at Bromsgrove international school.

My speciality subject is Biology in which I hold a degree from Bath University (2012), I have extensive experience teaching Biology at A-level in addition to Physics at AS. I enjoy tutoring all three sciences at GCSE, drawing links between the subjects during lessons to develop a more comprehensive understanding in my students.

I find the challenge of scaling back complex concepts to their core components and then developing interactive activities to explain these to students the most rewarding part of teaching and draw inspiration from the late Richard Feynman for his ability to explain what others could not in an intriguing and relatable manner.

Outside of science and travel, I have a love for classic cars, rugby, cycling and film.

Tutoring Experience

3 years experience as an English language teacher/tutor working with students of all ages and levels in Portugal, China, Belgium and the UK.

7 years post PGCE experience teaching/tutoring the three sciences at GCSE and A-level Biology in addition to AS Physics. My teaching experience includes two years at Queen Ethelburga's college, UK, three years as lead science teacher at AGS Muscat international school, Oman and most recently two years as head of the science department at Bromsgrove international school, Bangkok, Thailand.

Throughout this period I have tutored students towards their GCSEs and A-levels both in-person and more recently, online.

Tutoring Approach

Any good teacher knows there's no such thing as 'one size fits all' method of teaching, while teachers will have their personal preferences, a good lesson should be tailored to the content and student(s) being taught and as such the way one approaches a GCSE Physics topic such as kinetic energy will be very different to how one approaches A-level enzyme kinematics.

My teaching does however stick to a few key principles:

• Lessons must have a question as an objective: without an objective a lesson may drift off-course, it quickly becomes impossible to measure the success of a lesson when it has not had a clear focus, both teacher and student need to know at the beginning of the lesson what is the key question they are trying to answer in order to understand whether the lesson has been successful!

• Lessons must review and build upon what came before: It's much easier to remember and understand new ideas when you approach them as a story. Stories have a beginning, middle and end, and so does your understanding of a concept; however it becomes impossible to understand a whole story if you've forgotten or misunderstood the previous page. As teachers we must constantly review what came before in order to build deeper understanding and to ultimately have access to this knowledge through long-term memory when exam time comes.

• Lessons must be a continual dialogue: Thorough understanding is built actively not passively and tuition allows far greater scope for active dialogue with the teacher than any secondary school classroom. My lessons progress though dialogue with the student and will alter course when it is clear a topic needs further explanation. Where students may become lost in a school setting as a teacher follows a fixed plan from beginning to conclusion, tuition provides the flexibility to allow the tutor to know the student's live understanding through continual dialogue and to alter the plan accordingly.

I take the time to discuss and to get to know how best my new students learn in order to develop schemes of work and lessons to help them reach their goals, I pace the lessons accordingly and avoid the lazy 'death by powerpoint' approach which is all too prevalent in today's higher education settings. In order to truly achieve all the above the teacher must of course have a detailed understanding of the content being taught, only a thorough understanding will allow the teacher to approach the topics from multiple perspectives as is required by different students, I believe the academic qualifications of the teacher are key to ascertaining their foundational knowledge.

All students will be added to an online classroom account where notes, past exam papers, mark schemes (where required), homework tasks and videos are shared.