To spotlight our exceptional General Academic tutors once again, we would like you to meet Shravani Deo. Shravani is committed to fostering academic excellence in a way that is visual and adaptive for her students. Discover her unique tutoring style, her approach to personalized sessions, and her passions beyond the classroom.
What subjects and classes do you help our students with?
I have experience tutoring students in elementary, middle, and high school in subjects like Algebra I/II, Geometry, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and English. Beyond subject prep, I also tutor for standardized tests like the ISEE, ACT, and SAT.
What is your educational background?
During my time at James Bowie High School, I tutored struggling students aged 4-12 in subjects like Math and English reading & comprehension at Kumon.
While studying chemical engineering at the University of Houston as an undergraduate, I worked as a laboratory research assistant to determine the behavior of various cancer and immune cells.
I went on to get a master’s degree in Applied Bioengineering from Rice University. I began at General Academic as a Content Writer the summer before, and have continued on with them as a tutor since then.
I currently work as a research technician in vaccine research at Baylor College of Medicine while tutoring during the week and on weekends.
What is your favorite subject to tutor?
My favorite subject to tutor would have to be math, and that’s partly because math is one of my favorite subjects!
Math comes more naturally to me than any of the other subjects do, so I feel I am at my best when I’m tutoring students in all levels of math. I love breaking down difficult concepts into more manageable pieces and seeing students fall in love with math through better understanding. It’s very rewarding and probably my favorite part about tutoring to see the students who are struggling with math finally get it!
What does a typical subject tutoring session with you look like?
- I check in with the student to see how the day/week is going.
- We talk about what they’re learning in class and if they have any questions about any of the material or homework, or if there’s anything they are struggling with.
- If they’re struggling with their assignments, then I’ll explain and show them how to work through the problems, and we’ll work together for the first few.
- Once they feel more comfortable with the material, I have them work through the problem on their own to prove their understanding, and then we fine tune everything from there.
- At the end, I briefly summarize what we went over, and I discuss any resources that could be helpful.
What does a typical test prep tutoring session with you look like?
- Overall, I like to start sessions by chatting with my students about their week and stuff that’s going on both in school & outside of school, like any fun plans they have coming up–I enjoy getting to know them!
- Then we talk about homework they’ve completed that week: discuss any questions they have, any difficulties they ran into, and how they felt about it.
- We review as many of their mistakes as possible, which depends on what I wanted to cover with them in the session.
- We identify areas of improvement/focus and work on those for the remainder of the session. This typically involves me teaching them new concepts or doing targeted practice.
- We summarize what we went over and talk about homework for next time.
- For ISEE prep students specifically, I also like to end the sessions by quizzing them on vocabulary to make sure they are following through on their studies.
What’s your typical approach with working on executive functioning with elementary students?
- Greet them & ask them about their day – it’s especially important to build rapport and create a warm environment with younger students.
- Spell out everything that needs to be done for the day so that expectations are clear and the student knows what needs to be done for homework.
- Work on homework from their school, targeting anything that was confusing or unclear.
- Provide extra worksheets for reinforcement of concepts as needed.
- Check in at the end. I communicate to them what more needs to be done and send digital notes to their parents.
- I like to end the sessions by playing a game of their choice, as it gives them something to look forward to.
How do you view your role as a tutor?
Depending on the needs of each student, I can be both a mentor and a teacher.
With the younger students, I find myself being a teacher since they require more academic-based guidance and structure. The same goes for ISEE/ACT/SAT prep due to the demands of these tests.
I am more of a mentor when it comes to older students, especially those who come for subject prep. Most of my middle/high school students are independent and self-motivated, so I feel comfortable letting them take the lead, assisting and guiding them as we work. They also are dealing with a lot at this point in their academic career, so just being there for them plays a significant role in their growth.
Tell me about one of your favorite sessions you’ve had.
For context, the student always struggled with math, in part due to their dyslexia as well as insufficient learning from Zoom schooling during COVID. As a result, they lacked a lot of fundamental skills and disliked math in general. I’ve been working with them for more than a year, and for the first few months, we were just figuring out what works for them and how to keep them engaged (especially since they tend to get distracted and bored pretty quickly).
However, over the last few months, I feel like we’ve built much better rapport, and our sessions have been going much more smoothly.
At the beginning of the year, we were reviewing different ways to represent data (ex: stem-and-leaf plots, bar graphs, frequency tables, dot plots, etc.). They had seen most of this already, so a lot of it was review for them. I was initially using one resource to do practice problems, but I could see that they were getting bored. So, I suggested an alternate activity: I told them that they could come up with problems for me since they already knew all the topics, and then they could check my work. My only requirements for these problems were that they were challenging and represented real-world applications.
As it turned out, they had a lot of fun making up scenarios and problems! It was a great way to engage them, and they really liked being the “tutor” in this situation. I feel like having them “teach” me also reinforced their understanding of the topics. When it came time to wrap up, they told me that they couldn’t believe that the time had passed so quickly (usually, they’ll start to get tired towards the end of our sessions and ask me how much time is left) and that they had a lot of fun, which is a great feeling.
What is your favorite part of being a tutor?
My favorite part of being a tutor is getting to know my students and seeing them make progress.
I really enjoy interacting with my students and hearing about what’s going on in their lives. If I’m having a rough day, working with my students always puts me in a good mood! It’s a very rewarding feeling to see them improve at something that they were originally struggling with and to witness/hear about their accomplishments!
Outside of tutoring for us, what do you like to do for fun?
I usually like to paint landscapes, and I’ll use the photos I’ve taken or stock photos from Pinterest as inspiration. I’ll typically paint with acrylics and watercolors, just whatever is inspiring me at that moment!
I love trying out new recipes, especially the ones I see on Instagram. Cooking has always been one of my favorite avenues of creativity: At the moment, I’ve really been into Thai, Sichuan, and Indian food!
To balance out these creative hobbies, I also love to run, though it’s just for healthy fun! I trained for a half marathon in Houston a couple of years ago, but I’ve been too busy this year. However, I’m trying to make more time in my schedule so I can (hopefully) run the half in October!
If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be and why?
I would like to have dinner with my paternal grandmother. She passed away when I was really young, and I’d love to get to know her more. From stories my family has told, she was a pillar of strength for her children, and was loved by all for her patience and kindness.
Tutoring with General Academic
General Academic’s subject and test prep tutors provide the structured support to accommodate your student wherever they’re at. We help our students with a wide range of materials, ranging from 1st through 12th grade subject prep, ISEE, and SAT. To get the ball rolling, give us a call at (713) 838-7774 or fill out our tutoring request form.
