Leandro joined us in Year 12, studying Biology, Chemistry, Maths, Music and Greek at A-Level. He is an aspiring medic, and was drawn to Team Up as improving enthusiasm towards education amongst academically struggling children is something he is very passionate about.
We asked him to share more about his experience tutoring with Team Up:
I worked with a Year 9 student to improve his Creative Writing ability. At first, he was quite shy, but with each weekly session, little by little his confidence and his ability improved. Our sessions were always really relaxed in order to provide contrast to the more formal classroom setting at school. To prompt creative writing and stimulate enthusiasm, I used a number of different resources, including videos, photographs and music, the purpose of which was to link the creativity from multimedia into Creative Writing.
My most memorable moment was when there was a particular aspect of a topic that my student didn’t quite understand and instead of keeping silent, he had the courage to ask about it. This was a memorable moment as it showed that he was comfortable in the learning environment and had learnt the very important lesson that asking for help is always okay! The highlight came in our following session when he gave a perfect answer to a question of a similar style.
Not only has my ability to communicate clearly improved, but I have realised the importance of making a difference to someone’s education at such a crucial point in their life. Also, working in a wider team with such a great dynamic has taught me how to be professional and how to take advice from others with pride.
“Working with a team of other young people has enabled us to create a really lovely team dynamic where, at the end of each session, we all re-group in a debrief meeting and reflect on our individual sessions to the rest of the team. This allowed me to gain insight into what was successful for the other tutors, and how I could implement that into my sessions in the coming weeks.”
I definitely recommend the Team Up programme to other volunteers because of the wealth of satisfaction you get after having delivered a really good session each week. Also, the sessions are well-organised and the option for online teaching sessions makes taking part in the TeamUp both convenient and rewarding.
On behalf of the Team Up team and pupils, we say: Thank you Leandro!