David

I grew up in the northeast of England where I attended a local comprehensive. I was fortunate to pass through school with little academic pressure or expectation, an experience that I think stood me in good stead to explore subjects for their own sake, to develop independent interests and to attend an interview at Oxford mildly bemused by the consternation written on the faces of those around me.

I was fortunate to leave school with an A* and two A grades at A-level and to accept an offer to study English Language and Literature at Oxford from where I graduated in 2016.

Too often I have encountered students world-weary from unrelenting academic pressure and unable to see subjects outside of the narrow confines of what is required for an upcoming exam. I know first and foremost parents and students work with me to improve their results and that is forefront of my lesson planning, but I also recognise that students work with a private tutor usually for no more than a few hours a week – and that for a real academic blossoming to occur a tutor has to develop confidence and motivation in a student to put in the hours outside of the classroom.

I like to build meaningful, authentic relationships that empower students and give them the confidence to step-back from the pressures of exams to study in a creative, efficient and fulfilling way.

Outside of teaching I have reading interests in many aspects of psychology, in particular evolutionary and health psychology, the self and identity, as well as in Buddhism and the Stoic philosophers.

I love the outdoors and have been involved in sports since a teenager, focusing mainly now on climbing, although over the years these interests have morphed through athletics, badminton, paragliding, and even a short spell in sport parachuting where I amassed just shy of one hundred jumps and formed a mishmash, four-member formation skydiving team.