Teaching

I work in the Lans­ing, MI area and travel around the world teach­ing Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage and Amer­i­can Cul­ture using music as a medium. I find it is an excel­lent vehi­cle for help­ing teach pro­nun­ci­a­tion, vocab­u­lary, and con­text and it’s fun! Below are video links to some of the projects I’ve done with my stu­dents — I hope you enjoy them and please feel free to give me your feedback.

A+ Lan­guage School “The Prepo­si­tion Song” is a project I did with my begin­ning ESL stu­dents in the sum­mer of 2010. We stud­ied prepo­si­tions and then acted them out in var­i­ous places around the school and neigh­bor­hood. I wrote and recorded the song at home, over­dubbed the stu­dents singing and say­ing the sen­tences, and mixed it all together for the video.

The A+ Inter­na­tional Ukulele Orches­tra I started a ukulele group at our A+ Lan­guage School in East Lans­ing to help our stu­dents with their Eng­lish skills and to fos­ter a sense of cama­raderie among the dif­fer­ing Eng­lish skill lev­els. The uke is easy to learn, inex­pen­sive, and brings enjoy­ment to the audi­ence and play­ers alike!
“You Are My Sun­shine“
“The More We Get Together” 

Asan/Greater Lans­ing Stu­dent Exchange For the past few years, the Lans­ing Regional Sis­ter Cities Com­mis­sion has wel­comed stu­dents from Asan, South Korea to Michi­gan to be immersed in Eng­lish lan­guage and Amer­i­can Cul­ture. I was priv­i­leged to be one of the program’s Eng­lish teach­ers in 2010 and 2011 and had the oppor­tu­nity to chap­eron our area stu­dents to Asan.
“You’ve Got a Friend in Me“
“Michi­gan My Michi­gan“
“The Banana Boat Song/This Land is Your Land”

Can Tho Uni­ver­sity — Viet­nam 2009 In April of 2009, I had the oppor­tu­nity to teach in Viet­nam for two weeks at Can Tho Uni­ver­sity. The expe­ri­ence changed my life and started me on this incred­i­ble jour­ney. The stu­dents, staff, and I shared our cul­tures and tra­di­tions and I learned as much from them as they did from me. Here is a clip of me singing “We Shall Over­come” with Ms. Sau’s sec­ond year Eng­lish class — what fun we had!

Here are some of my favorite web­sites for study­ing Eng­lish; you can always work on your Eng­lish skills if you have a com­puter!

A Very Good Over­all Site
http://www.learnamericanenglishonline.com/

Vocab­u­lary
http://www.learningchocolate.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/ENGLISHCLASS101
http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/theclassroom/interactive/

Read­ing
Easy: http://www.starfall.com/
News: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/

Lis­ten­ing
http://www.elllo.org/(Lower num­bers are eas­ier)
http://www.esl-lab.com/

Gram­mar
http://a4esl.org/
http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hme/k_5/quizzes/

Games
http://www.englishclub.com/esl-games/
http://www.eslgamesworld.com/