PrepNow Tutor - Katherine C.
An adult ESL teacher with a Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Katherine is passionate, driven, and patient with new learners. She holds a BA in English with a minor in philosophy from Boston University and is pursuing an MEd in teaching English as a second language from the University of British Columbia. Her career so far has centered on teaching English to a wide range of students, spanning elementary school through adult learners.
Katherine got started teaching the summer after her first year at Boston University, when she joined the Breakthrough Collaborative as a full-time summer Teaching Fellow. “I designed and taught daily English lessons for 8th graders while completing over 100 hours of training under experienced mentor teachers, and that summer confirmed that teaching was what I wanted to build my career around,” she reflects. “As an English major, I had always loved language and literature, but Breakthrough showed me how much I loved helping other people gain confidence with them.” That fall, Katherine began teaching weekly adult ESL classes through the Worker's Assist Chinatown Language Assist Project, and she has continued ever since, later adding roles tutoring first graders in phonics as a Teach for America Ignite Fellow and teaching Math and English to 5th and 6th graders at a language school, ASC English.
“My proudest moment is helping a recently immigrated student improve his essay writing skills by providing corrections, feedback, and accepting revisions,” Katherine says. “His English improved a lot even though he was disadvantaged compared to other kids, and it was a joy to see him blossom.” Katherine’s background in English instruction, from foundational phonics through 8th grade English, makes her an excellent test prep tutor, particularly for the verbal section. Her math tutoring experience covers arithmetic, fractions, decimals, ratios, and introductory pre-algebra concepts.
Katherine describes her teaching style as warm, structured, and student-centered. “I start from where each learner actually is, not where a curriculum says they should be, and I build lessons around contexts that matter to them,” she explains. “With my adult ESL students, that means teaching grammar and vocabulary inside real situations like a doctor's appointment or a workplace conversation rather than as abstract rules. With my younger students, like the first graders I tutored in phonics, it means breaking skills into small, achievable steps and celebrating each one, so confidence grows alongside ability.”
At Boston University, Katherine was on the dean’s list for four semesters. She participated in the English Literature Association, the Journal of Poetry & Prose, the Lower Bay State Road Neighborhood Hall Council, and the philosophy journal. Outside of work, her life revolves around books, film, fashion, traveling, and staying active. “Reading has been my anchor since long before I studied English at BU,” Katherine says. “I gravitate toward modernist and contemporary global literature, and I love close reading and thinking about how language creates meaning.” This passion inspired Katherine to found and edit her university's first literary magazine, which she still writes and edits for, for pleasure. “I am also obsessed with skincare and love researching things related to skin!” Katherine speaks intermediate Mandarin.
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