Work & Academics

In October 2003, I received my TEFL (Teacher of English as a Foreign Language) certification through The Boston Language Institute. With the experience and rewards from my prior work, I knew I wanted to continue teaching. But my prior work also showed me that I had a lot to learn about teaching, and The Boston Language Institute’s one month course provided that training for me. During my month as both a teacher and a student, I trained in the communicative approach to teaching. Throughout the course, my teaching skills were further developed, critiqued, and ultimately, greatly improved. The course also allowed me the opportunity to teach yet another age group (the elderly); to me, teaching them was equally as rewarding as my prior teaching experiences. My training at The Boston Language Institute consisted of 120 classroom hours that were split between in-class training, teaching practice, and teaching evaluations. We taught two lessons in groups of two or three, followed by an additional four lessons taught on our own. Following the lessons, students and trainers evaluated the effectiveness of the lessons and helped strengthen the lesson plans. In all cases, we taught in a monolingual classroom setting, where our students were all elderly Russians. Class size ranged from three to seven students.

While living in Cambridge, Mass. for a couple of years, I continued my work as an ESL teacher at Approach International Student Center (AISC). Unlike my certification training, which focused on integrated lesson structures, most of my work at AISC was leading subject specific lessons. The subjects I typically taught were conversation, grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing; I occasionally led listening, pronunciation and elective classes. Working at AISC presented me with a wonderful opportunity to work in a very multi-cultural classroom—an experience I didn’t have with my prior ESL teaching experiences.

I also worked at King Open Extended Day (KOED) and at the Asian Student Center (ASC). KOED was an after-school program serving students at the King Open elementary school in Cambridge. The work was similar to the work of the EEP with the exceptions that (1) there is more grade division in the KOED program and (2) the overall enrollment/participation rate at KOED is much higher than that of one EEP site. The KOED program was designed to allow group leaders and youth development mentors to working with a relatively small group of students (approximately 15 students for each pair) to enhance their academic standards and empower children to become “active learners, leaders and participants in the world around them.” This was typically through a combination of homework help and educational and creative activities.

Some of the more fun projects I did with my group of KOED students included recording a couple of our own audiobooks—reading some of our favorite children’s stories and providing sound effects to them; building guitars using cigar-boxes and cookie-tins; learning to build a snow-fort together; and creating performances for a year-end talent-show.

At the Asian Student Center, I worked as a math teacher on Saturdays, teaching third and fourth grade math and teaching test-prep for ISEE and SAT math. These were pretty intensive math classes, covering a lot of material in each six week section, and was a nice alternative for me to try out some of my more formal teaching methods.

I just finished my second stay with Peoples’ Self-Help Housing, this time doing different work with them. While in Cambridge, I had created a website for a book-project they had received a grant for. They were very happy with the results, and when they heard that I would be back in Santa Barbara for several months, they invited me to redesign their company website, the end result of which can be seen here.

I am currently living in Chennai (India) where I will be working doing communications-related work for a non-profit, the Centre for Micro Finance Research. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that after some time goes by. I’m also taking online classes through the University of Phoenix towards a master’s degree in education. The classes take up a surprising amount of time, and are pretty demanding in the quantity of written work that needs to be produced. I’m currently in my second class, and I’ve been enjoying it. I’m in the process of picking a research topic, so I’m sure there will be some more papers posted here later, as well as some general comments about my opinions of the courses in general.

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