In short:
- exam guide passionate about learning
- scientist at heart
- lifelong language nerd
- back home in northern Germany after a long round trip
Hi, I am Angela!
I offer tutoring and exam preparation in and around Halstenbek as well as online. Together we will untangle your mental knots and fill in those knowledge gaps for more joyful learning and more confidence.
What I believe in:
Our education system leaves teachers with too little time to actually meet the needs of their students. When I still worked as a school teacher, the limiting instructions and targets meant I could hardly use all the inspiring concepts and methods I had learned during teacher training. This sets us up for a lot of wasted potential on all sides.
There are no wrong or even “stupid“ questions. Sometimes a student just needs an explanation from a new perspective or a reminder. I have the patience and make the time to answer these question for as long as necessary. In the end this saves time. Often I am told: “I have learned more during this one hour than in the last four weeks of maths classes in school”
A lot of what we learn in maths class will never be used again for the rest of our lives. Obviously, this is also true for other subjects, but in this case the gap between applicability and perceived difficulty in understanding is especially wide. Our brains need a certain level of logic training and a well rounded general knowledge is a good thing. Still it is time to thoroughly revise our maths curriculum.
At the same time the current crises show how critical it is to be able to assess probabilities, understand exponential growth and have a solid basic knowledge in biology and chemisty. My goal is to give as much of this to as many people as is possible.
In my blog, you can find out more about my ideas of meaningful transfer of knowledge, especially in maths.
“Bring your joy in learning back to life!”
Angela, 2023
All my life I felt most alive when I could find out something new. I was one of those children who enjoy school, even though I was super shy.
In 2022, the third time starting Danish was the charm for me. Back in 1991 a very dry text book prevented me from reading further than the second chapter. In the 2010s I looked into youtube videos and while they were more entertaining, I was concinced I would never be able to pronounce the “soft d” and gave up in frustration.
Duolingo perfectly accomodates my joy of playing and my sense of humour. It makes me translate sentences about sharks who eat the dolphins because of the lack of space in the pool. And so I accumulate points in the hope of making the 1st place in my league at the end of the week. It was this combination of fun and challenge that had been missing. Now I listen to a couple of podcasts in Danish and understand most of what is said.
With litte children you can observe how absorbed they are in trying new things and the joy of getting some new understanding. Every eureka moment makes their faces light up. If I manage to teach this joy in learning to just a few people, I am reminded why I work at exactly this place within the system. And then I find joy in teaching and end my day with a big grin.
In my blog, I will talk more about my ideas of meaningful transfer of knowledge, especially in maths.
Fun Facts about me
When it comes to indoor plants I have the blackest thumbs of all times. There is only one aloe in our house which I stay well away from. After even spider plants died on me, I finally got the message. My garden plants are a different story, however
I love Yule just as much as I love metal. The combination of both is the icing on my December cake. Every year I look forward to getting my Christmas-Metal-CDs out.
As a child I collected books with jokes and in 1st and 2nd grade made the teacher roll his eyes because every single topic reminded me of a joke which I begged him to let me tell.
I enjoy writing with fountain pens and currently I have five of them in use, filled with five differently coloured inks, none of them blue. There is no guarantee that I am not going to get more fountain pens with more ink colours. The black one is also perfect for drawing Zentangles, another very meditative hobby.
From early childhood I have been a sci-fi fan. I watched and read what I could get my hands on, from “Mindy and Mork” and “Tripods” to anything Star Trek. For a very short while I wondered if I would be an astronaut as a grown-up. But then the idea of actually floating around in empty space gave me the creeps and I had to make new career plans.
I love knitting, among other things I make socks, hats and shawls. It is such a meditative activity and I like to create things with my own hands in general. Unfortunately there are very few times during the year when it is cold enough for me to require even fluffy socks. So my best bet is to find other people I can supply with knit-ware.
The stations on my path through life so far
- 1992 to 1998 – studying chemistry at the Carl-von-Ossietzky-University of Oldenburg an University of Nottingham (Sutton Bonington Campus). My Diplom thesis was about heavy metals in soils.
- 1998 to 2002 – graduate studies, King’s College, London, researching hydrates and wax crystals that form in natural gas and crude oil pipelines.
- 2002 to 2004 – post-doc at the University of Potsdam, researching sensors for measuring protein C in blood
- 2004 to 2005 – remote studies of “applied environmental sciences” at the University of Koblenz
- 2005 to 2007 – Teacher training in Glinde
- 2007 to 2014: working at schools in Dithmarschen
- 2012 to 2014 – training in systemic coaching with Conzendo
- Since 2014 – self-employed as professional teacher and tutor
- currently close to finishing the Danish course and brushing up my French on Duolingo
If you would like to read the extended version of my life story so far, I have written a blog post about how our life paths do not have to work out as planned and how eventually we can find that special place for us where we we fit in perfectly and happily.
Instagram grid 2022
Interested?
Contact me and let’s find out together how we can untangle your mental knots and get you ready for that exam. I am looking forward to hearing from you!
Read more about me in my blog
In my blog I write about science and learning but I also post short stories:
