Edmund Nolan

I hold a Creative Writing MA from the University of Toronto. I was also a Teaching Assistant. I have taught, tutored and edited in variety of fields (including writing, ESL, Social Studies). I have taught in the Engineering Communications Program at The University of Toronto for 3 year.



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Tutoring Locations
I will consider all students in the GTA

Ontario:

Toronto

Lesson Types and Tutoring Fees

Type	Fee
Individual	$35 - $36
Group	$60 - $75
Online	$30 - $31
E-mail	$30 - $31

Lesson Languages
English

Tutoring Services and Experience
I tutor primarily in English, with a special focus on writing, but I am able to tutor in any of the humanities.

I have taught in the Engineering Communications Program at the University of Toronto for three years. With ECP, I have taught four courses. The skills I have taught include technical writing, creative writing, presentation skills and engineering design, in addition to tutoring engineering students for whom English is a second language, as well as engineering students taking humanities electives.

In 2009, I completed a MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. That program is unique in its approach and has furnished me with a wealth of experience. The Creative Writing program involves a mix of creative workshops, literature study and teaching assistantships, all of which contribute to the skill set needed in an English Tutor.

Since finishing my MA, I have taken on both high school and university students as a private tutor and as an instructor in a classroom environment. Tutoring has exposed me to students facing various levels of difficulty with reading comprehension and writing. This has proven to be a challenge, but all of the students I have worked with have visibly improved as a result of my instruction. Most have even learned to enjoy the subject matter they had often despised. I have also had the opportunity to teach a literature and essay writing class at Gen Academy in Toronto. At Gen, I was allowed to produce my own lesson plans and perform a two-hour lecture once a week. In addition, I assigned in-class writing assignments and essay topics. I also provided a thorough individual review of each essay.

As a student at U of T, I engaged in a wide range of writing and research. In addition to literature, I covered subjects such as economics, history, philosophy and sociology. My creative writing focuses on both poetry and non-fiction. As a writer I have worked with both Dionne Brand and Rosemary Sullivan as well as in a tight-knit student workshop. In the workshop, we read each writer’s work with a critical yet respectful eye. That experience taught me how to approach the developing skills of others: one must be respectful and gain the trust of the writer while at the same time remaining objective enough to be able to identify flaws in the writing. However, I must stress that I found that honesty is often ineffective if not coupled with compassion and understanding; writing is a delicate and personal operation and in a personal setting, like a workshop or a tutoring session, the writer must be handled with care.

As a TA, I read countless student papers and from that I learned to gauge the levels of development through which a student must pass in order to realize his or her potential. I was also able to work with students on an individual basis in order to improve writing proficiency. I am proud to have helped students break from the essay strategies of high school—while gaining valuable knowledge of those strategies themselves—to write at the more complex level demanded at university. As a TA, I was also able to work with students in a classroom environment when I volunteered to run tutorial discussions for an American Literature course. This forced me to teach complex ideas to students just beginning university. I am proud to say that I roused a palpable interest in difficult topics out of the students. As a result of that and my work with student essays, the professor in charge of that course nominated me for the Outstanding TA Award.

As for my own academic studies, my time at U of T challenged me to keep up with some of North America’s top students of literature. Unlike most MFA programs, which are solely focused on creative writing, U of T requires its creative writing students to attend literature courses alongside the Literature Masters students. As U of T offers a premier Graduate English program, I was expected to write academic essays of the highest caliber.

All of these experiences have given me a great respect for the challenges facing educators while at the same time providing me with the tools to meet those challenges. Tutoring allows me to use the skills I have gained in recent years to help young people to succeed in the area of my expertise.

Sincerely,
Edmund Nolan


Subjects

High school:	English, History, Literacy / Essay, Social Studies
College and University:	English, History, Literacy / Essay, Philosophy, Political Science

Tags
English, Literature, Essay, Application Essay, Creative Writing, Thesis, Essay Structure, Poetry, Novel, Reading Group, Workshop