I was born and raised in New York.  For the most part, it was in Floral Park, a village on the Nassau/Queens County border that is most famous for the Belmont Stakes, a Triple Crown horse race that was held annually at Belmont Park, which is right across the street from my high school.  Floral Park also has a train station in the center of the town that gets to Manhattan in approx. 40 minutes. The population is mostly of Irish and Italian descent.  In fact, a lot of my friends are 1/2 Irish and 1/2 Italian and although my last name is Rodriguez, I too have some Italian and Irish ancestry.

I grew up playing basically every sport there is to play.  By high school, I played soccer in the fall, track during winter and lacrosse in the spring.  In my senior year, I was All Conference in soccer and lacrosse as well as district champion in the 3600 meters (2 miles).  In addition to excelling in sports, I was frequently on the honor roll for high grades, even receiving National Honor Society recognition.  As a result of my scholastic achievement, I was awarded an academic scholarship to Marist College to major in Communications and play lacrosse.

Undecided after two years of college, I took a leave of absence from school.  During that time, I traveled to Prague to meet with friends, who were taking a semester abroad through their own colleges.  That's when I learned about teaching English to speaker's of other languages (TESOL) and the career opportunities it offers.  Upon my return, I went back to Marist and changed my major to English.

After graduating with a BA in English from Marist College, I worked for a year at Speed Wire Inc., a telecommunications company, where I began to learn about running a small business.  When I saved enough money, I returned to the Czech Republic to pursue a Trinity TESOL Certificate from Prague Schools.  I wanted to return to the place where I fell in love with traveling.  Once completed, I remained in Prague for 4 months, tutoring a couple of private students to pay the bills.

Upon my return to New York, my mom and I lived in Little Neck, Queens.  I was able to get as a part-time teacher at the Huntington Learning Center, until my old, college roommate asked me if I wanted to move with him to San Diego.  Since I love to travel and have never been out west, I took the opportunity and started a road trip across the country. 

I was moving from job to job, trying to climb the ladder for my first 2 years, including some teaching stints at the Human International Academy and the California Coast Language Academy.  I was finding it difficult to get enough hours or benefits teaching, so I took a full-time position at a growing, small business called TRIO Display. 

TRIO is a company that designs retail stores and supplies the fixtures through it's web business.  Over the next 2 years, I learned the ins and outs of business, from the company's founder and author of The Budget Guide to Store Planning and Design, Jeff Grant.  There I took on many responsibilities: administration, sales, customer service, accounting, research, marketing, site management and new employee training.  As the company grew, so did the problems in the economy.  With the retail industry being one of the hardest hit, TRIO went from a little over 20 employees (there was 14 when I started) to about 7.

In 2009, I returned to San Diego after visiting New York over the holidays unemployed, without a career.  I was determined to get back into teaching.  I've seen how TESOL has grown in the US in terms of demand and schools opening up.  I was hired as a Teacher's Assistant at the American Language Institute (ALI) at San Diego State University (SDSU).

At first, it was just supposed to be a couple of weeks.  They have a program where Korean teachers come to SDSU to improve their English, so they could be better teachers back home.  As the course went forward, I was given increasing hours and responsibility that includes leading off-campus tours to the Gaslamp, High Tech High and Hardy Elementary school, so the teachers could see American classrooms firsthand.  These experiences were rewarding in many ways: cultural enrichment, getting reacquainted with teaching and learning new techniques and practices through assisting the highly skilled and experienced SDSU staff.

From that experience I began to teach at IAE, International Academy of English: a TOEFL class and an elective, topic class called, "English in Context," in which I created the syllabus. This 3-month contract position was very rewarding and enjoyable. Unfortunately, due to declining enrollment, my contract wasn't renewed.  Currently, I'm available for private lessons. If you need extra practice on the TOEFL, speaking, writing, reading, listening, conversational or business English, let me know; I can help.