“While teaching a Business English class, we would watch a popular business competition reality TV show to familiarize students with common business expressions and vocabulary, while also comparing and analyzing business culture in the USA. Then I’d have them simulate that in class by dividing the men and women into two teams that had to compete in a business challenge. The favorite was going to Trader Joe’s to investigate the products and marketing strategies; then they had to pitch a new product to the store manager, who would choose the winner. I remember the students pitching a Korean bibimbap bowl, which they actually sell now!”

“I spent months working with student who was a teenage boy and not really interested in taking more English classes. In our first lesson, I could tell he was obviously playing a video game on a second screen rather than paying attention to the lesson. I began to talk with him about his favorite games, who his favorite streamers were online, and he shared with me that he had aspirations of becoming a game designer in the future. After that lesson, we completely shifted gears and I created a completely customized curriculum for a creative writing project. He created an original idea for an RPG video game, so we discussed game theory and design, analyzed different video game genres, researched various cultures for character design/world building inspiration, and give presentations in class about them. We also practiced conversation skills through writing game dialogue and acting it out, discussing the nuances of the language and how certain tones can convey different meanings, and comparing the differences between written and spoken English.”

“One of our students suffered from crippling dyslexia, so we paired him with an instructor who specializes in working with students of differing abilities. Over the course of six months working with his instructor, he was able to read a chapter book for the first time in his life at age 30. He also felt comfortable enough to take the driving test- something he thought would never be possible. The instructor contacted the DMV in Minnesota on his behalf and was able to get the DMV to provide him with a reader in a separate room in order to take the test, and he passed!