About Me and Language

The shorter story:

I’m an ESL instructor.  I’ve been teaching in various capacities for almost 20 years, and in the last five years or so have found that I love teaching at the community college level.  I’ve been teaching advanced ESL reading and writing for the last three years, and have found a new passion for teaching.  I’m here in this class because I want to be a better teacher of writing and reading, and because I would like to improve my teaching and expand my employment opportunities to include teaching “regular English” and basic skills composition and reading classes.

The longer story:

I never thought much about foreign languages as a kid.  When I was 17, my sister, Kairn, went to the Republic of Congo (which at the time was called Zaire) to teach English to high school students.   I decided to put off college for a year and work a couple of jobs to save money so that I could go visit her.  She told me that the official language of the Congo was French, and that I should take at least a semester of French before going to visit.  I took a French class at the local community college and hated it.  The teacher was mean, the grammar was difficult, and the pronunciation was impossible.  And the teacher was really mean.  I squeaked by with a C, and managed to not learn very much.

When I got to the Congo, I was struck with fascination with all the people around me speaking French.  All of the sudden French was fascinating.  It seemed to represent a new way of perceiving the world. I came back to California and dove into studying the language.  When I was done with French, I moved on to Spanish, and when I transferred to UCSB, I decided to study linguistics, because I wanted to learn about language.

After graduating I took a certificate course to be able to teach ESL.  My goal at the time was to travel the world as an itinerate ESL teacher and learn all kinds of new languages and learn about all kinds of cultures.  Life didn’t really work out that way, but I had a great time teaching ESL in various beautiful cities in California. 

After a few years I decided to go back to school and entered a doctorate program in linguistics at UCSD.  I did fine for a few years, but towards the end I realized that I was more of a teacher than a researcher, and left that program.  The good news was that the degree I got at UCSD allowed me to teach at the community college level.  I moved to Northern California to teach ESL to Japan Airlines pilots and started teaching ESL at night at the local community college.  I found that I loved teaching at the college level;  I was able to hold my students to a higher standard, and I felt that I was really making a difference in peoples’ lives.  At some point a year or so ago I realized that I needed more training in teaching writing and especially reading, and that if I could teach basic skills and freshman comp I would have more employment opportunities.