Grades 11 and 12 are two enormous years in any student’s life and can bring all sorts of stress to the whole family. I can’t change the world, but I can help reduce the anxiety in your world by supporting your Grade 11 and 12 student’s writing whether they are doing ATAR or completing the International Baccalaureate.

In a perfect world the earlier years of high school would have equipped your teen with all the knowledge they need to succeed in Grade 11 and 12 – but this world is far from perfect. And the pressure to succeed in Grades 11 and 12 can mean all those earlier lessons and habits evaporate. Working with me on a weekly or twice-weekly basis gives your senior student a quiet compassionate listener. Someone who they trust to explain the assessment requirements without judgement of “silly” questions. A person to guide their efforts and at times to make them laugh.

All support and learning options are tailored and delivered to meet the needs of specific students and their identified priorities in improving their written work. As I learn more about your student, and their strengths, gaps and aspirations, we implement techniques I learned and developed in North American and Australian academic writing. We dive deep to support the needs of each student and each writing task. Ideally I will have worked with your student before their senior years, but that’s not always possible, and sometimes there might be just one task that needs support. Some of the options to meet those needs are detailed below. If you’re imagining something different, please contact me so we can discuss ways I can help.

• Emergency Essay Intervention
• Essay Draft Feedback
• External Exam Preparation
• STEM Writing
• Referencing and Formatting

All prices are available after discussing your needs. Please email [email protected] to discuss your specific requirements and receive a quote.

Emergency Essay Intervention

Book an online session for a 45-minute speed-brainstorm of your forthcoming essay. Receive a pdf of our joint “whiteboarded” concept development and get confidence that you know what you want to write before you begin. If you have a draft Introduction, we will review its structure together. This feedback will give you a foundation for writing a successful essay. In addition, you will get a taste of The Writers’ Schoolhouse planning approach and concepts to support your essay’s Introduction and Conclusion.

Essay Draft Feedback

Writing is revising. No one can write a perfect essay in one draft, so once you are finished brainstorming, have detailed your paper’s outline, and written a first draft, then it is time to revise. You need to do your own revision first, but once that’s done you can send me your draft and receive detailed comments explained to you in a scheduled meeting online or in person. Another option is to wait for teacher feedback on your draft – once you’ve done your best to respond to your teacher’s suggestions I can help you check them off and clarify anything that did not quite make sense to you.

This is not editing. I do not make edits or write your essay. I offer detailed recommendations with explanations; the focus is on teaching you things you’ll need to improve not just this paper but all your future writing.

You will want to think through the suggestions I offer, so be sure to schedule review this early enough to allow both for me to provide comments, and to allow you time to refine your final draft.

External Exam Preparation

Whether you’re going to write about All the Light We Cannot See, Othello, The Dry, Never Let Me Go, or you’re facing IB Papers 1 and 2, a boot-camp with a group of your friends and The Writers’ Schoolhouse will help reduce anxiety and increase success.

Shakespeare one-on-one

Jump over to the Shakespeare in School page to find an option to help you out.

Exam Prep Boot Camp

Intensive boot-camps are designed to aid small groups of students to achieve their writing goals supported by and within a cohort of committed fellow writers. We work together and dive deep with the text you will be analysing in your final External English Exam so you benefit from my knowledge of the text, my insights about what markers look for to decide whether you write well, and suggestions about improving your final mark. Boot-camps include direct teaching and discussion, practice writing tasks, facilitated peer support and feedback, as well as engagement with your Writers’ Schoolhouse writing specialist.

STEM Writing

Being in Science, Engineering, Technology, Medical or Social Science fields is no excuse for poor writing. In fact, clear communication is even more important when concepts involved revolve around technical discipline specificities, and jargon is dense. Yet many STEM students feel very uncomfortable writing, and the ideas that seem so logical in concept or theory, end up in an incoherent mess on a page – you need to be sure your writing is not jumbled, illogical or grammatically inconsistent.

As a scientist it is likely you know what you want to explain, but how do you organize your argument? How do you clearly delineate and define your specific research question? Does your rationale clearly connect the claim to your research question and support your hypothesis? How do you focus your ideas and communicate effectively? These Writing for Research skills are complex, specialised and can be carefully taught to you at the Writers’ Schoolhouse.

The Writers’ Schoolhouse specialises in support of STEM students because I am a qualified chemical engineer with two decades experience working in the corporate STEM environment. I then moved into Social Sciences and earned an MA from The University of Chicago. In 2019-2020 I worked in the University of Chicago Graham School MA program in Threat and Emergency Response Management, and the University of Chicago School of Social Work. You can be confident that I speak your language and the language of your scientific audience.