Gabriel

Tutoring Experience

I have extensive experience tutoring students at different levels.

As president of the Trinity College History Society in my final year at Cambridge, I led sessions in the Wren Library teaching first year historians about visual sources and the history of political thought.

During the pandemic, I set up and led an alumni mentoring service at my former school, directing tuition at those students most affected by lockdown. I have also advised a number of prospective Oxbridge applicants.

Tutoring Approach

My teaching approach is student-oriented. Tutorials are conversational and designed to meet students' individual needs and address areas for improvement. I always spend the first part of a lesson with a new student getting to know their current interests in their chosen field so that I can better tailor subsequent lessons to their needs.

For subject-specific tutorials in History or Politics, we will focus on mastering the art of historical argument by creating essay plans and answering practice questions. I will also provide suggestions for further reading so that more confident students can challenge themselves. Other exercises, such as historical debates or reviews, can also be very useful. I will ensure a healthy balance of primary and secondary sources so that students may appreicate the richness of their chosen subject.

For Oxbridge applicants, my approach focuses on personal statement writing and, most importantly of all, interview preparation. I aim to help applicants *think* like a historian so that they are best prepared for the discursive nature of the Oxbridge interview. We will run through interview formats and different kinds of interview questions. These tutorials are designed to push students beyond their A Level syllabuses to consider the craft and role of the historian more deeply, and, once again, will be tailored to the applicant's interests while also suggest possible new and complementary areas of focus. Students will be asked to read extracts (or the entirety, if they wish) of such classic works of history such as Alexis de Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856) or R. G. Collingwood's The Idea of History (1946). They will also be introduced to the broad range of historical schools that currently make up the discipline, including political, social, economic, intellectual, and global history, as well as the turns that the historical field is currently taking, such as the 'temporal' and 'gender' turns.

One objective above all transcends all my classes: to encourage students to think even more critically and imaginatively for themselves.