PrepNow Tutor - Ilana J.
Passionate and experienced education professional Ilana has a wide range of mentorship experience. They graduated cum laude from Brown University with a bachelor’s in literary arts. While earning their undergraduate degree, Ilana received the scholastic writing award. They were also a fellow in undergraduate playwriting. After graduating, they studied publishing at Oxford via the Columbia University journalism department. They are currently an intern at a large publishing house in New York City.
Ilana started tutoring English while still in high school, working with younger students. That work continued into college where they worked for a local industrial arts non-profit as a youth engagement coordinator. Primarily, they worked with teens, mentoring them emotionally and academically—specifically in English, biology, and art. During that time, they also worked as an educator in Providence public high schools. Their time developing curricula makes them uniquely qualified as an educator because they understand the impetus behind educational standards.
“I love helping students overcome challenges that I faced in years prior and empowering them to find their own voice,” Ilana explains. Each of their teaching positions has given them the opportunity to “to build up student’s knowledge and confidence.” As such, they say “It is one of my favorite things to see a student grow into themselves and learn to trust their own judgement in academics and beyond.” Ilana strongly believes that asking questions is the most important part of teaching. “Instead of giving a student the answer, I like to ask questions that guide them to discover the answer—if there is an objective one—and strengthen their own critical reasoning in the process.”
As a high school student, Ilana was a varsity athlete in soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. They were also part of the literary magazine, the satire magazine, and competed in mock trial and on the math team. They served in the women’s empowerment club and as a Jewish religious student leader. In college, they were part of a health advocate group and the FSAE car team.
These days, Ilana focuses more on physical creations, spending time crocheting, making jewelry, and welding. They also spend plenty of time with their cats Calvin and Hobbes. When they go out, you’ll often find them riding their longboard and feeding birds from the bottle of bird seed they keep on their keychain.
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