About Me
Every student deserves an education. This is my core philosophy as a teacher and I have used it to guide my teaching the entirety of my career, especially at Highlands. It doesn't matter the age or demographics of the student, everyone deserves to learn so they can further themselves in their personal and professional lives. As a teacher, it is my responsibility to provide access to the education that my students seek and provide it in a way that optimizes their ability to learn, to the best of my ability. I take pride in leaving no student behind and appropriately challenging my students, while at the same time making material comprehensible to them.
Diversity is the greatest value my students bring to my class, to Highlands, and to America. I strongly believe that a diverse America is a strong America and have had the pleasure of teaching truly diverse classes of students hailing from numerous countries.
At Highlands, I have had the pleasure of supporting my students both inside and outside the classroom in a variety of ways, and not just in a teaching role! I have helped numerous students understand documents that were critical for them to comprehend although they were far outside their language-learning levels, I have helped students come up with ways of scheduling their lives around their families and other responsibilities so they can continue to learn English, and I have helped students research and find the resources and opportunities they needed.
Before teaching at Highlands, I worked with the South Korean government as an English teacher trainer, making lasting professional and personal relationships with the faculty, staff, and trainees of the institute. Interpersonal relationships with students are important to me, as I feel that students of all ages learn best when there is mutual respect and shared goals. My trainees’ post-test scores demonstrated that they learned effective new methods and pedagogies for modern English teaching under my instruction. In addition, attending and presenting in two international English teaching conferences helped me stay current with the necessary methods I needed to perform my job to the highest degree possible.
Having worked and lived in a foreign country, I am in a unique position to empathize with adult students who are surrounded by a foreign language and culture. Although my experience is surely not the same as that of every person living abroad, I believe it gives me insight into the specific learning needs of my students.
I have also taught remedial English at Sonoma State University. My students came from many different cultural backgrounds and had varying degrees of English proficiency. From this experience, I learned how to be flexible and personal in my instructional strategies.
