Ben

I believe that tutoring is all about paying it forward. Inspired by a mentor of my own, a history teacher of mine, my tutoring career began in middle school with a student struggling with history. I loved it. Coming from Northern Virginia, where academic competition is steep, I realized that many students felt left behind and felt like they lacked a personal connection with the work that they were doing. This has been the cornerstone of what I believe tutoring is all about, and over time this approach has not only brought me many great friends, but also deepened my love for and understanding of the material. While my areas of tutoring proficiency have expanded over time, my belief in the importance of the relationship between the student and the tutor has not. I have worked with students on things from editing a French essay to learning how the Federal system works to how to do long division, and in each case I have loved building those relationships. I have long felt that this was an important area of education policy and, as the representative of Fairfax County's 188,000 students on its School Board, I tried to bring those personal experiences into effective education policy making. Working in the education policy arena has given me a new insight into the best ways to instruct students but also into the goals I hope to pursue in my future; education policy remains an important interest of mine, and I hope to work in that area after graduating.