As an experienced Maths teacher and tutor I work to bring the best out of my students and get satisfaction out of their progression. I am reliable, patient and know how to boost student's confidence.

Find out more about Tanya

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

  Mathematics has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Throughout my education, it was the one subject I genuinely looked forward to, and there was never a single moment when I decided to pursue it — it simply stayed with me until it became the natural path to follow. What drew me in was the certainty of it: a problem either works or it doesn't, and when it does, it works for a reason you can see and prove.
  
  Because maths came to me fairly naturally, I often found myself explaining it to classmates who were struggling, and that is where my interest in tutoring began. Too many capable students decide they are "not a maths person" simply because one topic was taught in a way that didn't suit how they think. One-to-one teaching lets me adapt to the student in front of me and build confidence alongside competence, so they leave feeling that maths is something they can genuinely do.

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

  The topics I enjoy most are geometry questions with complex diagrams. They look intimidating at first glance — angles, overlapping shapes, information scattered everywhere — but there is real beauty in them once you know how to read them. A great deal of my teaching goes into showing students where to start: what to mark on the diagram, which fact unlocks the next one, and how to work in small steps rather than trying to see the whole solution at once. The look of a question is almost never a measure of its difficulty, and once students stop being overwhelmed by the appearance of a diagram, they usually find they can handle far more than they expected.
  
  I honestly can't say there is a topic I enjoy less — every part of maths has something worth exploring. The area I find particularly rewarding to teach is the heavily worded problems that have become far more common in recent years. They can be on any topic at all, and the real challenge is rarely the maths itself; it is working out what is actually being asked and translating that into something you can calculate. Students almost always struggle with these at first, so I spend a lot of time on them: pulling out the relevant information, ignoring what is there to distract, and turning the words into equations. Knowing how to approach these questions is essential to succeeding in maths today, and it is a skill that can absolutely be taught.

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

  My secondary school maths teacher, without question. He was, quite simply, a god of maths — there was nothing you could put in front of him that he couldn't take apart. But what made him exceptional was not how much he knew; it was that he never really taught us formulas or methods. He taught us how to think.
  
  He would stand at the board with a problem and, instead of showing us the answer, ask what we noticed, what we already knew, and what the sensible first move might be. He wanted us to reason our way in rather than reach for a memorised procedure, and he was patient enough to let us get there ourselves. That approach shaped how I understand maths, and it is exactly what I try to pass on to my own students — because a method solves one question, but knowing how to think solves all of them.

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

  Patience, above everything else. Students learn at different speeds and rarely in a straight line, so a good tutor has to be comfortable explaining the same idea three or four different ways without ever making the student feel slow for needing it.
  
  The second is listening. Before I teach anything, I want to hear what the student already knows and where exactly their understanding stops, so I can start from where they actually are rather than where a syllabus assumes they should be. Progress comes much faster that way, and the student feels part of the process rather than being talked at.

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

  My secondary school maths teacher had one rule he never let us skip. Before anyone was allowed to attempt a question, we had to write down what we were given — in the shortest possible mathematical language, no sentences, just the facts as symbols. Only then would he ask us to write, underneath it, what we were actually being asked to find.

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

  The biggest ongoing challenge is retention. I can explain something clearly, watch a student use it confidently by the end of the session, and then find two weeks later that most of it has gone. That used to frustrate me, but I've come to accept it as a normal part of learning rather than a failure. It's simply why I build revisiting into how I teach — coming back to earlier topics in later sessions, mixing old material into new practice, and checking understanding rather than assuming it.
  
  The harder challenge is unlearning. When a student has picked up a method incorrectly and used it for months, that wrong version is often more firmly fixed than anything I teach them afterwards. Under pressure in an exam, it is the old habit that resurfaces. Replacing it means rebuilding the topic from the ground up, so the student can see for themselves why the correct method works rather than simply being told to swap one set of steps for another. It takes patience from both of us, but it is often the single change that lifts a student's grade the most.

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

  What I enjoy most is turning something that looks impossible into something obvious. Taking a question a student has been dreading, breaking it open in front of them and reducing it to a few simple moves is genuinely satisfying — watching their face change when they realise it was never as complicated as it appeared, just several simple steps wearing an intimidating disguise.

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

  For most students, maths is the subject they dread, and my whole aim is to change that — to make it clear, logical and approachable rather than something to be frightened of.
  
  So my lessons are about removing that fear first. I explain things in plain language, break every question down into clear steps, and never move on until the student can see why something works. Once maths stops feeling frightening, it starts feeling logical — and that is usually the point where the grades take care of themselves.