Introduction Post

Teaching wasn’t always my first career choice growing up; rather, I had planned for a luxurious ride in the fast lane as a lawyer–”I’ll get paid to argue with people, get paid a lot!” I often clamored.

Dorky as it may seem, I actually discovered my love for teaching after I was misplaced into WRT 150: a freshman writing course. The first time my red pen scampered about frantically on my freshman friend John’s scattered essay, I knew for certain it was my destiny! The red pen fit into my hand like a glove and the grin on my face as I proceeded to explain to him the reasoning for the dripping blood from his paper was undeniable: I Loved Editing!

One day while I was helping John outline and organize  the format of his essay in class, he asked if I would tutor him. “Tutor? Me? You want ME to tutor YOU??”. Astounded, I accepted his request and soon had a small writing “groopie” hanging out in my dorm about twice a week! I was so thrown off as to how my fellow freshies could make it to college and not understand the difference between an introduction and a body paragraph?

From then on, it has become my goal: to take my bundle of red pens into my classroom and point out the structure of a basic essay to middle school students to ensure they are never shoved into a dark hole of WRT 150, peaking at their professor with furred brow atop their pen and paper, like my friend John!

My passion for English was doubled when I enrolled in my first TESOL course: Teaching English as a Second Language. I had flirted with the idea of missions before; however, love captured me before I could explore that passion further. Thus, I figured, what better way to be married AND do what I love than to do my mission here? The “native speakers” have been immigrating here for years and I can do “mission work” right here in the little town of Borculo! Genius, pure genius I say!

Therefore, I plan to explore the techniques and current issues regarding ELL’s (English Langauge Learners) in secondary education. As a future teacher, ESL is my passion and I am both curious and inspired by the vastly increasing number of teachers needed in this field–as well as the few qualified teachers teaching it. I hope to learn about numerious techniques as well as how students responded to them, in an effort to better equip myself before I hit the ground running with my bundle of red ink pens!

In an effort to better knowledge myself, I have subsribed to a Google Reader (RSS) that includes the following subscriptions of material I will be posting about:

              ~New York Times: Education Section

              ~BBC New: Education Section

              ~Google News Search: TESOL

              ~EBSCO Search: ESL and ELL

              ~Blog Feed: Free Linking and Thinking

Well, that’s my little ditty about how I got to be here: a bloger! More to come soon!