Take the fun road to the top! Oxford Double First. 33 years’ teaching experience. Confidence-boosting. Lively, creative tuition. KS3-GCSE. Adult Improvers.

Find out more about CATHERINE

• When did you develop an interest in your chosen field and in private tutoring?

  After eleven years of full-time classroom English teaching, I realised that although I love the classroom, what I really love is one-to-one teaching. Students can ask me questions with less self-consciousness when they are away from their peers, so it's easier to help them. I can also find out more quickly what they are interested in and tailor my lessons to suit them.
  It's a joy to see them gain confidence and discover talents and interests
  they didn't know they had.

• Tell us more about the subject you teach, the topics you like to discuss with students (and possibly those you like a little less).

  English Language and Literature is a rich and endless subject. You can read, speak and write about anything. Recent topics in my lessons include:
  stress, volcanoes, perfume, murder, witches, surfboards, friendship,
  mountains and ghosts. This subject lets you explore both the real world
  and imaginary worlds, to engage with our own times
  and meet the minds of those that have gone before us.
  I find great satisfaction in helping students to shine in their exams and gain results they hardly dreamed they'd achieve. I do this by igniting their interest, making lessons fun and helping them to find some personal connection with the subject so that they enjoy independent study. I draw cartoons,
  e.g. The Essay Dinosaur, to make abstract ideas clear and approachable.
  What I do not do is constantly drill them in exam technique, as I think this
  just kills the subject for them! Of course I have the end in view, and exam technique is a crucial part of that. However, it is just as vital that they enjoy learning and have confidence in themselves. Those are the qualities that create success - both in the exams and far, far beyond them.

• Did you have any role models; a teacher that inspired you?

  Yes - Mrs Hern, who read us exciting, alarming science fiction stories when we were eleven. Mrs Kirman, who showed me that rigour and detail were enjoyable things, because you learnt more, built your vocabulary and could then read anything you wanted! She also said I'd make a good teacher.
  Dr Nicholas Shrimpton at Oxford, who, while a brilliant academic, also talked like a normal person. He never hid behind technical jargon. Books, stories, language and writers were alive for him, reflections of life, and they are to me.

• What do you think are the qualities required to be a good tutor?

  The ability to make lessons so enjoyable and rewarding that students look forward to coming and never beg their parents to let them stay at home!
  Genuine interest in each student and the expertise, flexibility and humour to help them. A knack for making the subject a great adventure, not a dry and dreary obstacle course. The ability to help students to see their mistakes as little teachers, and to be resilient about the ups and downs of learning. After all, if we didn't make mistakes, we wouldn't laugh nearly as much as we do!
  A good tutor loves learning, and really enjoys seeing their subject through the eyes of the young person they are helping.

• Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

  "I'm making my own connections now, instead of just learning them from the teacher." A student said that to me in her last lesson before her exams.
  I was very happy to hear it, because I want students to find something in the subject that matters to them. Then learning becomes personal and creative
  as well as independent - and there is no stopping them after that.

• What were the difficulties or challenges you faced or are still facing in your subject?

  Exam technique can take the place of imaginative experience in some of today's classrooms. This is counter-productive - it does not foster a love of learning or self-confidence. We all know that each student has something new to bring to the world, but each student needs to know this, too. So instead of making them keep measuring themselves against the exam board's assessment criteria, I give them interesting things to do. While they are busy fighting dragons, flying over forests and landing on Mars, I'm the one who's reading the exam criteria and helping my students to dazzle the examiners.
  I actually quite enjoy reading those prescriptive exam criteria and thinking, 'Right. How can we spin this into gold today?'

• Do you have a particular passion? Is it teaching in general or an element of the subject or something completely different?

  Creativity - Putting something in the world that wasn't there before -
  e.g. a story, a character, a poem, an idea, a song. Whatever it is, you made it. I have written and performed storytelling songs in the folk/acoustic/country style on guitar for over twenty years. The stories in the songs have come from my travels in the American West and Southwest.
  Exploration - Following a spark of curiosity and watching it become a passionate interest, even a career. Students come to me at an age when they are still being told what to learn about, yet in the meantime developing interests and skills of their own. I love to give them a taste of different subjects and writers, to lend them books, so that they can start choosing what they want to learn about. These steps towards intellectual independence motivate them and prepare them for later study and their lives beyond it.

• What makes you a Superprof (besides answering these interview questions :-P)?

  I love this job more than I did twenty-five years ago because I'm better at it now. Every young person I meet teaches me something new, so it never loses its freshness and magic.