online english tutor – Page 4 – PREP in York

Book of the Week – We Need to Talk About Kevin

Have you read this? It’s one of the most challenging and disturbing novels of our time. Is it nature or nurture that creates a monster? And who is responsible if that monster is a child?

‘Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.’

Warning: This isn’t in any sense a children’s book, and is probably best suited to older teens +. It’s graphic and frightening – but don’t let that put you off!

Tutoring trips in York, books books books and excitement at PREP HQ!

OK, so PREP HQ is my little house in Heworth, but nonetheless, excitement abounds!

English trips for tutees (and their families)

You may have seen my previous post about the trips I’ll be running this year. Kicking us off on Sunday 10th October will be a visit to York’s newly reopened, beautiful Art Gallery, where we’ll get inspired and creative and write some wonderful verse to complement the paintings and sculptures we see! All tutees are welcome – please remember that there is a small charge for entering the Gallery, and that Year 7-11 tutees will need to be accompanied by a parent. Do get in touch if you’d like to join us!

Books, books, books

I’m a little ridiculously excited by my ‘Book of the Week’ campaign. I’ve got to say that I had a really hard time whittling down my enormous list of ‘books everyone really must read’ to 52, but I got there in the end! Week 1’s is Year of Wonders and it’s an absolute corker – historical fiction that goes way beyond the usual kings/bodices/beheadings that are popular at the moment. It tells the true story of ‘the plague village’, Eyam, and is utterly compelling.

In other exciting book-y news, I’ve been asking tutees this week to tell me about their favourite books, and I’ll soon have a board of recommendations up for them all to peruse. Parents are welcome to make contributions too of course!

Literary Events 2015-2016 – PREP in York trips and visits!

I am really delighted and excited to share with you that I am planning a whole host of literary trips and visits for my tutees this year! Read on for all the details, and please do get in touch if you have any questions.

Parents are welcome to all events and must accompany tutees in Years 7-11. Please note that where there is an entrance fee, you will need to make the necessary arrangements yourself. You will also need to provide a packed lunch where appropriate.

You are welcome to bring friends and family; please let me know in advance how many of you there will be.

Other than entrance fees and theatre tickets, I am running all of these events and trips for free – I hope that lots of you will get involved and I look forward to seeing you!

Saturday October 10th, 10am

Visit to York Art Gallery – get creative and write poetry using paintings and scuptures as inspiration.

Wednesday November 18th, 7.30pm

Visit to the Grand Opera House for a performance of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ – 5 tickets available – please contact me asap to confirm your place! I have prepaid so the cost will be £12.50 each, to be paid to me in advance please.

Saturday December 5th, 10am

Visit to the Museum Gardens – discover the remains of the Roman Fortress and learn what the Romans have to teach us about rhetoric.

Saturday January 16th, 10am

Visit to York Minster – explore some of Shakespeare’s most famous Kings through text and history.

Saturday February 13th, 10am

Visit to the National Railway Museum – indulge yourself in your favourite children’s literature and turn your hand to writing some of your own.

Saturday March 12th, 10am

Visit to Fountains Abbey – walk in the shadows of the monks and discover some of the oldest religious texts in existence.

Saturday April 9th, 11am

Visit to Castle Howard – explore the house in the context of Brideshead Revisited and read extracts over a civilsed picnic!

Saturday May 14th, 11am

Visit to York Art Gallery – a more advanced poetry class that will use the art work to inspire you while you learn how to write using complex forms.

Saturday June 11th, 10am

Visit to Rowntree Park for a morning of drama culminating in a short performance. Open to amateurs and professionals alike!

Saturday July 9th

Visit to the Minster Gardens for an end of year celebration in the form of a miniature lit-fest. Bring an extract of your favourite piece of literature to read. There will be cake…

Meeting a York poet

Wandering through town the other day I was surprised and delighted to see a man sitting behind an old fashioned typewriter and a sign declaring, ‘POEMS on (almost) anyone or anything’. Of course I couldn’t resist going and talking to him!

He told me that he writes the poems requested and then people can pay as much as they like for them. I (rather rudely) asked him if he makes money as a poet and he said he does, which I thought was pretty impressive because I think I remember reading once that even the most popular modern poets only sell a couple of thousand copies of each of their books. At any rate, I asked him to write a poem on why poetry is important and about half an hour later I received this rather lovely little verse. (I paid him £5. Do you think that’s fair?)

Poetry is important, by Stefan Kielbasiewicz

Poetry is not important
because of Shakespeare
Eliot, or Frost, and not
everyone’s cup of tea
but important things
like engineering, medicine,
or programming aren’t either.
It’s not my place
to say whether it is important
or not, since that statement
like poetry itself, cannot
be true or false.
If it’s important, it’s because
it involves people from all over
the world, and lets them say
what they mean and feel
in a different way,
and nothing could be more important
than having that possibility.

So there we go. This is for all my students who’ve ever asked, ‘but what’s the point of poetry?’ I hope you like it as much as I do!

Do go and find him – he was on Parliament Street last week though I don’t know if he’s always there. And buy a poem!

He’s on Facebook at this link, or you can search streetpoetryyork (with no spaces, just like that) to find him.

English ‘tuition’ in and around the sights of York

Should you, and how can you, tutor your children during the school holidays? Of course there’s no right answer to this – many students (and their parents) would be horrified at the thought while many others find it helpful not to lose momentum. The summer holiday in particular is long and, as is oft stated in the papers come the Autumn, a time when many children get out of the habit of thinking analytically or of concentrating for any significant length of time. One way you can approach the issue is to increase the family’s focus on educational trips and activities, either alongside your regular English tuition or while having a break from it. (You don’t have to present these as work of course – it’s much nicer to just have a lovely family day out with some interesting things to look at and talk about thrown in there!) One of the wonderful things about living in a city like York is that we are spoilt for choice when it comes to things to do with our families – and many of those things are brilliantly and subtly educational! Here are three of my favourite things to do in York to which most children and teenagers shouldn’t object too much…(and if they do, bribe them with cake at Coffee Culture on Goodramgate afterwards.)

1. rackham-tree+girl If you’re interested in books as physical objects as well as vessels for words, The Minster Gate Bookshop is pretty much heaven in rickety, shelf lined form. It has Bibles bigger than your average 6 year old, first editions, beautiful children’s books and enough literature for the whole family to get lost in for a good hour. It also has fantastic old maps and prints. My daughter is collecting Arthur Rackham prints that provide lots of good opportunities to inspire dressing up adventures and stories about the characters and that will one day be an introduction to some classic literature.

2. This really goes without saying, but York Minster has a wealth of incredible things to look at and discuss – from the stone kings to the stained glass, the crypt and the library, all in addition to the sheer magnificence, beauty and size of the building itself. 400 year old Bibles you have to don gloves to handle? A great introduction to a discussion about the power of language through the centuries. The kings tie in nicely with york-minster-1 Shakespeare’s Histories (spot the relevant ones) and the crypt’s archaeological and historical lessons could provide a fascinating opening for someone interested in the Anglo Saxons. There’s been a church on that spot since 627AD after all!

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, Jeremy Irons, 1981 Mini-Series

3. OK, so this one isn’t quite in York, but it’s close enough. Castle Howard is, in my humble opinion, one of the very best stately homes in the country, if not the best. It is stunningly beautiful, enormous enough that you can easily spend a whole day exploring, has gardens and horizons you couldn’t ever get bored of and, of course, an absolutely fascinating history. In fact it seems almost flippant to say that one of my favourite reasons to visit is because I can wander around the grounds pretending to be in Brideshead Revisited, given the history of the Howard family, but I confess my obsession with Evelyn Waugh overwhelms even my love of John Vanbrugh and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. It is worth many day trips for the cafe and garden centre alone but the best way to see it is from a picnic rug, next to the fountain, with a copy of Brideshead in one hand and a croquet mallet in the other. All teenagers should read this book.

So there we go. Fairy tales, Bibles, Anglo Saxons, Shakespeare and Waugh, all barely a stone’s throw from a slice of cake or a brownie in the city centre – and these are just three of the hundreds of places your children could get some ‘English tutoring’ in York this summer. And if they’d like to come and see me so I can share some of the excitement with them, that’s brilliant too.

How I became an English tutor in York

I’m one of those people who was always going to be a teacher. Just on my mother’s side of the family alone, my mother works in higher education, my aunt is a primary school teacher and my grandmother taught EAL. When I did ‘what should I be when I grow up?’ tests, the answer was always teacher. If you’d asked me when I was 16, I’d have turned my nose up and told you I was going to be a writer, a lawyer or a vet, depending on the week, but in my heart of hearts I think I always knew.

Teaching English is brilliant for two reasons: I get to talk about books and I get to talk to teenagers who, in almost all cases, are funny, brilliant people. Put simply, books make me happy and teenagers make me smile. The combination is exhilarating.

When I moved to York it was for university. Like lots of York graduates I then decided to stay, because, well, why wouldn’t you? York and North Yorkshire are beautiful. I may not officially be a northerner but this is definitely where I belong. I married my northern boyfriend and we settled in to our respective schools. (He was a History teacher for a while but now he does things with computers. Apparently this is also fun, but I suspect not as fun as tutoring English.) I loved teaching in schools with a passion – I loved boarding, I loved English, I loved Drama, I loved school plays, I loved being a form tutor, I loved UCAS (I know!), I loved my students, I loved my colleagues and I loved, loved, loved talking about books all day.

Bearing in mind how much I loved teaching in schools, it was a slow move to becoming a private tutor. I took on a couple of students to whom I was recommended by other teachers and gradually I decided that as a tutor I would be able to make more of a difference than I could as a school teacher. When tutoring English and Drama I and my students can achieve so much more in an hour than we can in a classroom environment. With no distractions, an hour of tuition can be like a week’s worth of classroom lessons; we can focus entirely and precisely on what that particular student needs and we can make enormous progress extremely quickly. This is brilliant for students who can suddenly see that they have ability they didn’t realise they had and can get an almost instant confidence boost. I can plan schemes of work but I’m also not tied to a school’s deadlines so if it becomes apparent that we really need to spend 20 minutes on structuring complex sentences right now, we can do it and the student can get immediate feedback. I can work really carefully with my students’ needs and, importantly, they can tell me exactly what they want without worrying that they’re taking up too much of my time or that I won’t have the spare hours to dedicate to helping them when they need it. They get an instant level up – and, in a way, so do I. I see that glow of confidence, that smile as a particular skill clicks into place, that laugh as a previously impenetrable text suddenly makes sense.

Teaching English and Drama in York was brilliant but tutoring English and Drama in York is even better because the same things are still true – York is beautiful, books make me happy and teenagers make me smile – and now, to top it all off, I get to teach every lesson with a freshly made cup of tea and a slice of Yorkshire parkin. It doesn’t get better than that.

My life in books

My favourite book as a child was…The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. When I was little I was fascinated by the pictures (snakes swallowing elephants, monstrous trees, tiny sheep…) but every time I re-read it now I understand something different from it about philosophy and faith. I have to read it at least once a year and I always give it to babies when they’re born. It feels appropriate!

My favourite book as a teenager was…Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. It’s haunting and beautiful and definitely not just a boy meets girl story. I always wanted a Mr Rochester rather than a Mr Darcy, but when I discovered Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea it was a revelation to me that characters – and people in real life – could have multiple lives. Re-reading Jane Eyre now, I can’t help but be swayed by Rhys’ evocation of Caribbean lushness and a woman so condemned to being ‘other’ that there’s nothing left for her but madness.

The best beach read is…Prospero’s Cell by Laurence Durrell. Especially if read on a beach in Corfu, followed by a hike to find the cliffs and cell in question! Durrell argues very convincingly that the island in The Tempest must be either Malta or Corfu, and that Corfu is the more likely. There’s an amazing little hermit’s cell near Kaminaki, perched on the cliffs above enormous rocks, and all the vegetation around it is knotty pines like the one Arial was trapped in. You can easily imagine a shipwreck, a monster and a magician appearing before you. Then, in the evening, after your hike, the best book to wind down with is My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, Laurence’s brother. It’s aimed at children but it’s hilarious, and makes it harder to take ‘Larry’ seriously.

The book I always have by my bed is…The Bible. I’ve always meant to read it cover to cover, but I tend to get half way through Exodus and give up. It’s fascinating to me, both as a spiritual and a historical text.

The book that changed my life is…Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. It’s about a girl embroiled in a civil war which threatens to destroy her family and her island. A man on the island decides that the only way to rescue the children is to educate them, but he only has one copy of one book, which is Great Expectations. Ultimately, Matilda learns the same lessons as Pip, but in a very modern context. It’s the only book which has ever made me burst into tears in public, when I was reading it on a train! I also love it because it’s about teaching, and about how literature can be a salve for all of us when times are tough. When I’ve had a long day at work it’s a brilliant reminder of what books can do for the human race, and makes me feel lucky to be able to talk about them all day.

My favourite non-fiction book is…the Dictionary!

My favourite play is…Richard II by Shakespeare. From John of Gaunt’s beautiful speech as a ‘prophet new inspir’d’ about ‘This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars’ that is the England which forms the prize and the battleground of all the History plays, to Richard’s heart-rending goodbye to his Queen before he is murdered, this is a play which looks at the character of the King and of kingship in such detail that the audience can’t help but empathise with him, even as they cheer on Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV.

My favourite poet is…John Milton, for everything he ever wrote but especially Paradise Lost. When I taught Book 9 for the first time I realised how powerful poetry can be. If it’s possible to sympathise so whole-heartedly with Satan ‘involv’d in rising mist’, what can’t poetry do?

The book I was supposed to like but didn’t was…Ulysses by James Joyce. I love A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners but Ulysses was just…boring.

If I could only read one book for the rest of my life it would be…The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I know it’s a cheat!

Why I love books – an entirely incomplete list.

They’re a chance to make use of someone else’s imagination for a little while.
They smell nice.
They’re an escape from normality.
Other people write much more beautiful prose than that which I use for thinking.
They’re a useful ‘leave me alone’ sign on public transport.
I can make (semi) informed judgements about other people based on what they’re reading on public transport and then play a game whereby I imagine a name, job and amusing life for them.
They fit in my handbag. (It’s possible that I only buy handbags big enough to hold a book. Or two.)
Old favourites never get old.
They’re a good icebreaker when not used as ‘leave me alone’ signs. It’s all in the tilt.
They’re links through time to other readers.
They contain words and images I’d never have thought of.
Some of them contain poems, some contain plays, some contain fiction and some contain non fiction. Endless possibilities.
It is pretty much impossible to run out of reading material.
Films are often disappointing when compared to the book but books are never disappointing when compared to the film.
Libraries are places where scrunching down into a sofa and not moving for three hours is positively encouraged.
They make me a better writer.
They make me a better reader.
They educate me.
They inspire me.
As long as I’ve got one, I’m never bored.

Oh yes. Books galore.

‘When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.’

So said Voltaire, but while everyone likes to get value for money, our society does not always offer a level playing field in terms of education. One of the things that I’ve been painfully aware of since I began tutoring is that some of the people that need it, might not be able to afford it.

I firmly believe that an excellent education should be available to all and as such I’m pleased that I’m now able to offer discounted rates to those from low income families. Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss this.

Half term shenanigans

So the iGCSE is done and dusted, the Shakespeare paper has been tackled this morning and pupils will be breathing a sigh of relief up and down the country… Not quite so for the GCSE lot, who have English Language still to go – cruelly placed as it is, just after half term.

How do you maintain that exam focus over a week of holiday? Yes, of course, you stick to your revision timetable, and you try to remember to eat well, and, if you’re like me as a teenager, you lock yourself in your room for a few days at a time only to reveal yourself, mad-doctor-haired and more than a little smelly, desperate for a shower on about Wednesday afternoon.

The most important thing you can possibly do though, no matter where you are in your exams and no matter how many you still have to go, is to give yourself a day off. A whole day. Preferably (and I know that in terms of your social life this is tantamount to suggesting you run through the school shouting the national anthem while wearing a bear costume) while turning your phone/laptop/brain-chip that connects you to your friends off.

I can hear people scoffing. But you’ve just spent the last few weeks living, breathing and dreaming exams. You’ve been in school every day or revising at home, you’ve sat in the same spot in the exam hall staring at the head of the same boy in front of you through hour upon hour of test and you’ve spent your break times and lunch times conferring with your friends about which bits were easy and which bits were hard, probably winding yourself and each other up about all the silly little mistakes you might have made but won’t know about for sure until results day. You need to just…stop. Have a day off. Spend it outdoors. Spend it with your family but tell them they’re not allowed to mention the E or the R words. (That’s ‘exam’ and ‘revision’ not ‘Emergency Room,’ though probably best to avoid a trip there too.) Go to the seaside, engage in some mindless window shopping, play with your little brother, walk the dog, read a magazine, watch the news and remember the real world out there, go to the park, go swimming – do whatever it is that you used to do back in the days when you were ‘normal’ and not thinking about Geography Unit 2 when you woke up in a sweaty panic in the middle of the night.

Have a day off. Your books will be there tomorrow. And when you’ve had a good, old-fashioned exhausting day of playing out, (which no one is ever too old for, by the way) sleep well, set your alarm for a decent time and get going on that revision. It’ll be worth it.

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