Meet Eric: TESOL (M.A.'22)

What made me interested in the program is that I had nine years of experience teaching overseas in Egypt, Colombia and Ecuador, and they were American schools with American curriculum. So I never had any formal training in ESL. So it made sense for me.

My biggest takeaway from the program and how it's impacted my teaching is really I have learned how to save a lot of time in my lesson. Planning and lesson planning has become easier. It's easier for me to think about how to make the content accessible for my students and create better and more interesting and engaging projects and lessons. 

I would say the best part about being an ESL teacher are the students that I have. We have a very culturally diverse population of English language learners, so it's very cool to be able to work with different languages and people and students from different parts of the world. 

One of the assignments for me during the program that was the most impactful and meaningful and eye opening to me, was when we had to learn a language within six weeks and record a conversation  that was just 30 seconds. It put it in perspective just how hard and difficult and how much time and skills and time it takes to do even the most basic things, like have a 30 second conversation.

The program taught me some strategies that I use on a daily basis with my students. Most of the strategies I use help me teach skills that students will need in whatever class and whatever year. But I'm able to teach in a way that teaching those skills are like second nature, like annotating or taking notes in an engaging way for students to learn and use for future classes. 

I would recommend doing the TESOL program at Western, especially if you are a teacher that has some experience. The program is very practical. And everything that I learned in my classes, I have found a way to transfer those into my lesson planning or how I teach. I think that the program has also been very helpful for me to engage students that aren't learning English as a second language. 

Well, if you're a teacher thinking about going into ESL one of the most rewarding things is the population that we teach. It's very culturally diverse. We meet students from all over the world. We get to know their families and their interesting backgrounds and their stories on a more intimate level. And just knowing my students has been the most gratifying part about being an ESL teacher.