"I have been a teaching assistant at the University of Connecticut for two years. I have taught classes in biology and biochemistry with average class sizes of about 20 students. I hold office hours for these classes and I always encourage my students to contact me for one-on-one tutoring if there are materials that they do not quite understand. In cases where the students are having a hard time understanding a complex problem, I like to make simple connections with material they might have seen elsewhere and slowly build up to address the problem. In cases where the student was completely at a loss, I would often go over the very basics very thoroughly and provide examples such that the student will have some hands-on experience instead of just me lecturing. It is a personal belief that learning is like building a skyscraper, you can't expect to build a tower of knowledge without a very stable base (or a very solid understanding of the basics) for which to build upon." less...