Dani

Former editor and correspondent for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology, I’m studying part-time towards a masters at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

I have 3 years tutoring experience and as a student I interned at the Wellcome Trust in their medical humanities and engagement education team. I now freelance my editorial and communication services to publications and SMEs in the life sciences industry around my studies.

In my free time, I am an alumna mentor for current undergraduates at the University of Reading, as well as an Advice and Guidance volunteer for an employment charity for London-based refugees and asylum seekers.

I also love languages (though sadly can’t teach science in any - yet!), biohacking (science art, citizen science projects and FabLabs) and health promotion in resource-limited settings.

Tutoring Experience

I have 3 years tutoring experience, as well as 9 months as a volunteer classroom assistant for GCSE biology (and oddly enough, one GCSE Spanish class). I also have design and facilitation training for workshops with young people which looks to accommodate all types of learner.

Although I decided against pursuing a PGCE after graduation, I did do 8 weeks with the education team at the Wellcome Trust. This included meetings on policy and curriculum at the Department for Education, governance events at the House of Commons, and regular evaluation and follow up work on formal and informal STEM education resources funded by the trust for museums, galleries, schools and informal science learning centres. I also co-wrote content for and helped design an educational poster on protein synthesis and write articles for the Big Picture magazine, a free biannual educational publication distributed to secondary schools across the UK (ages 16 - 19).

A lot of waffle, but hope this gives you a little bit more context of my experience!

Tutoring Approach

I feel it's important a 'tutee' is comfortable with me and our aims for each session - so I like to have a casual meet up to talk about our target areas and scope out a plan before booking any further sessions.

I especially don't want to patronise older students, so I think this is the best way to suss out if we'll be a good team going forward. Therefore I put this session at 25% of the usual fee, just so it covers some of the travel and time if we decide it's not a good fit!

For sessions, I believe it's best to breakdown the "biological language" (the secret to a lot of science is language!) so even if you can't remember a term, you can work out what it means. I also try to explain more complicated processes using diagrams - as this is a technique I use in my own studies and find that is what usually works best.

Past papers, casual "pop quizzes" (need to find a better word for those!), articles, videos and podcasts are also tools I use to tutor with.

However, I realise these approaches don't suit all learners, and I'm also happy to set homework for the student to complete between sessions as I find this helps with exam practice and generally memorising keywords etc.

Finally, I think organisation of study is really important - making spreadsheets for target subjects and deadlines in the lead up to exams helps break down the syllabus and make revision a lot more manageable.

Feel free to ask away! I'm able to travel within the London zones, though if this on peak travel time I request a small contribution to transport costs. Otherwise, I can offer a space at my home in NE London (DBS checks in place), and drive if you are in reasonable distance/able to offer parking outside of the congestion zone.

Availability: Varying flexibility according to other projects and study schedule, including weekends.