Oxford graduate, qualified EFL teacher with over 17 years' experience at all levels

Find out more about Mischa

• When did you develop an interest in your chosen field and in private tutoring?

  I always loved writing stories and recording pretend radio shows when I was little, and at school my favourite subject was English. I started writing poetry when I was 16, and when an English teacher encouraged me I decided I wanted to be a poet. After university I started teaching EFL, and that was when I discovered how much I love teaching. Over the years, I did more and more private tutoring, which I prefer to classroom teaching because you can create a tailored and adaptable learning journey, and incorporate individual interests and research into the lesson.

• Tell us more about the subject you teach, the topics you like to discuss with students (and possibly those you like a little less).

  I teach English literature, Creative Writing and English as a Foreign Language. I love talking about the subtle shades of the English language: the overtones, subtexts and ambiguities which are not necessarily discernible using conventional grammar rules, but are more about idiomatic and contextual meaning. I also teach Maths, which is a subject I have discovered a love of as an adult that I did not feel as a child. I believe my own process of late conversion helps me in persuading students who are still unconvinced by the subject!

• Did you have any role models; a teacher that inspired you?

  I had a very inspirational English teacher, who had given up a more lucrative career as a lawyer because of his passion for literature and teaching. He was very cool, wore sharp suits, and could play blues piano and dance salsa, but most importantly it felt like he was learning with us, and interested in our opinions, rather than that he knew everything already and was just handing down his knowledge. I try to cultivate a similar feeling with my students, even if it means sometimes pretending I don't know something, or at least forcing myself to see it with fresh eyes.

• What do you think are the qualities required to be a good tutor?

  I think a good tutor requires patience, the ability to express things in several different ways and see which works for the student, and their own love of learning and enthusiasm for the subject.

• Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

  In A Level History classes at school, I would draw illustrations and doodles in the margin related to the things I was writing about. Luckily my teacher had no objection to these as long as the essay was good - in fact he seemed to quite enjoy them - and I think they helped me relax and write better, more fluent essays. I learnt from that that sometimes you need to let a student find their own way into the subject, and when it looks like they are avoiding it or wasting time, they are often already on that journey.

• What were the difficulties or challenges you faced or still facing in your subject?

  I was always very happy with English lessons, and my enthusiasm helped me overcome most obstacles, but Maths I found a bit difficult sometimes. I often didn't know why we were doing particular operations, or what these abstract concepts or formulae meant in real terms, and it ended up turning me off the subject by A Level. So now I always try to emphasise with my own maths students what any operation means in the real world.

• Do you have a particular passion? Is it teaching in general or an element of the subject or something completely different?

  My passion is poetry, and I am a regular performer in London, with several publications to my name. But I also have a very interdisciplinary approach to, and love of, the Arts in general, so the visual arts and music feature heavily in my life too.

• What makes you a Superprof (besides answering this interview questions :-P) ?

  My experience, empathy, and sense of imagination are, I believe, my best qualities as a teacher, and are qualities which form the basis of a 'Superprof'!