Welcome to TESL Adventures! TESL is short for Teaching English as a Second Language. Our blog will explore different experiences of working with English language learners (ELLs). Along with our experiences, we will share tips, resources, and articles for TESL.
Join our adventure and maybe we can help you learn something new! Learning is lifelong and we want to share our passion with you. To start us off, I will be introducing our blog contributors. Our blog has three contributors with unique backgrounds and experiences.
Our first contributor is Molly Sand. Molly is an English as a Second Language teacher. Her teaching license is ESL K-12. She currently works with grades 6, 7, and 8. Through her profession, she has been able to interact with students from all over the world, who have varying levels of English proficiency. This has exposed her to the challenges and successes for students learning a new language. They are passionate and have encouraged her to learn more about their cultures every day. She enjoys working in a diverse environment because she is passionate about learning and traveling. Her students have taught her so much over the years and she plans on sharing some of her classroom experience with TESL Adventures, as well as including specific resources for working with ELLs. She has been at the same school for about four years. Her experience there has included field experience student, student teaching, long term substitute teacher, summer school teacher, and full-time EL teacher. Each of these experiences taught her how to adapt quickly and made her more confident as an educator. Now, she is pursuing a Master’s degree in Writing Studies and Rhetoric. With this new degree, she hopes to become a better writer and educator.
Next contributor is Seth Naslund. He has been working in writing centers as a Writing Coach and Administrator since 2013. He has worked with more than 1,200 students from over 30 different countries. He enjoys working with students from diverse cultural backgrounds as it allows him to learn about people that have a wide range of beliefs and lived experiences. He has Master’s degrees in both English Studies and Rhetoric and Writing. Seth is passionate about helping students of all ages, cultures and learning styles discover their own individualized writing processes. Working with ELLs is always an adventure for Seth and he finds helping these students find their writing voice to be one of the most rewarding aspects of working as an educator in writing centers.
The third contributor is Michael Libby. He is a triple major at Saint Cloud State University. His majors are Community Psychology, Chemical Dependency, and English. He will be heading into a Master’s program at SCSU right after graduation. During his free time, he volunteers at Minnesota and Teen challenge. This past school year he started working at Mary Stangler Center for Academic Success. During this time, he had the opportunity of working with a lot of students from eastern Africa, which has been an amazing learning experience for him. Even though this is not what he pictured himself doing, it has been life-changing at times. He is looking forward to sharing these amazing stories and the challenges that go into working with some of these students.
If you made it to the end, We imagine you are wondering where else you can find us. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram to receive updates about blog posts, tips for learning English, and more adventures.