Teaching

For the past 19 years, I have been honored to teach and interact with diverse multicultural students in Korea, Japan, and the U.S., garnering invaluable ideas and skills through these experiences. The following chart specifies the student population, time and location of my overall teaching career.

*PreK-12 students: Taught kindergarteners to high schoolers at private language institutes

*Adult students: Taught adult learners in various programs (e.g., Community language program @ Columbia University)

*Undergraduate students: Taught credit-bearing English language courses in colleges

*Graduate students: Taught master's & doctoral graduate courses in TESOL/AL and data analysis

Teaching in Korea

I first encountered English in my home of Seoul, Korea at the age of ten. It all started when my older sister brought home two cassette tapes. One was Michael Jackson and the other was the boyband New Kids on the Block. I loved those tapes, and although I was eager to understand the lyrics, there were very limited resources and opportunities to study English in South Korea at that time. I decided to explore English on my own and began to listen to the tapes repeatedly, almost wearing them out in the process. I phonetically translated the lyrics into Korean so I could mimic the sounds without knowing the meaning. In my opinion, that was when I really started to develop strong pronunciation and comprehension skills of oral English. Another big breakthrough happened for me in my undergraduate years when I came across the American TV series Friends. The benefit of a visual reference was tremendous; I spent almost all my free time watching the show, exposing myself to English in ways that reminded me of the vocabulary I picked up from the pop songs. I began to understand how those words came together as phrases. With growing confidence in English, I enrolled in my undergraduate university as an English major; I began my journey as an English teacher in Korea following my graduation from university in 2004.

In Korea, my students were mainly kindergarteners to high school age (equivalent to preK-12). Many young students in Korea are what Prensky (2001a) termed “Digital Natives,” and the country's high-end internet infrastructure made it easy for me to ensure my students could access our technology-based language learning. The class video on the right is from an interdisciplinary literature study course for 6th graders that I taught in 2012. I introduced students to multiple tech tools, including Prezi, which was quite new at that time, and some of the students began actively using it in class. I also began to build and use class websites (starting from 02:45) where students would engage in asynchronous discussion activities. Thanks to these early experiences with instructional technology, I would later become responsible for training teachers in educational technology.

Started Implementing Technology

Class video: 803 Elite in 2012

Teaching in Japan

In 2006, I decided I wanted a bigger challenge, so I flew to Japan to teach English in Tokyo. Teaching English to students with a different native language proved to be a tremendous challenge. I had to work through multiple language barriers by finding examples that would appeal to students from a different nationality than my own. I spent a significant amount of time actively improving my own English, along with my teaching methods. In order to better facilitate my teaching process, I studied Japanese intensively by applying the same method I used for learning English. I believe the biggest factor that helped me succeed in this was my tendency to repeat things I found interesting; I dove into Japanese animations and TV shows. I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 1 in 2008, after just one year of self-directed immersive study.

Flexible Teaching Environment at Xebec English Forum

Xebec was the English language institute in Tokyo where I taught students aged six to adult for seven years. The institute allowed a great deal of flexibility to its English teachers, and I took full advantage. My creativity flourished during my time at Xebec, and I significantly upgraded my pedagogical skills as I tried new things. My students always told me that the fact that I am a non-native speaker of English was a motivating factor for them, because if a non-native English speaker like myself could successfully learn and even teach English in a foreign country, they believed they could, also. This had been a great motivating factor for me to continuously learn and expand my pedagogical skills.

Aside from teaching, I took charge of many exciting initiatives at Xebec, such as directing and coordinating annual speech contests and preparing students for an annual Pearson Seminar on Youth Leadership event that took place at Pearson College, Canada. After a month of studying on-site at the leadership camp, my students had several days to explore downtown Vancouver. I created activities to enrich that experience; students volunteered to set up a camp for cancer survivors and ran around the city for a scavenger hunt (we called it The Amazing Race). It took me that whole month to generate safe routes for the activities, but we all had great fun!

Tapping into Students' Interest and Expertise

*Image from: https://consolevariations.com/storage/images/variations/consoles/sony-psp-3000-monster-hunter-3/large/sony-psp-3000-monster-hunter-3.jpg

Since Xebec had a contract with a local college, I also taught English conversation classes at Nihon Kogakuin Engineering College in Tokyo, Japan. It was my first time to teach credit-bearing courses in a higher education setting, and I had more than 50 students in any given class. In my first course with computer engineering students, almost none of the students made eye contact or spoke with me. Later on, students told me they were too shy to speak in English with a stranger, but at the time, I was stymied. When I noticed all the students were playing the same game during break time, I immediately recognized their interest, and ran to the store to purchase the game and a PlayStation Portable. When I brought it to our next class and asked for help learning it, I saw a tremendous shift in the dynamic. Instantly, they became the teachers, and I was the student. Students began using English to guide my game play, created and illustrated a strategy booklet in English for me, and discussed helpful strategies for a beginner like me.

Teaching in the U.S.

Teaching English-based Conversation in the U.S.

After teaching for seven years in Japan, I wanted to strengthen my academic skills as a second language instructor and applied to the TESOL masters’ program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Teaching in the Community Language Program (CLP) in the mornings and taking TESOL courses in the afternoons allowed me to directly apply new methods in real-time. This crystalized my knowledge into pedagogical practice, and I received positive feedback on my teaching evaluations. The video on the right is one of the class videos I created for students at the end of each semester. I had such a great time with students from all over the world!

CEP A5 Intro.wmv

CLP Summer B 2013 Advanced 5 Class Video

*Visit the course website to learn more about A5!

Becoming a Faculty Member at Juniata College

Following graduation, I became an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructor at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA. It was a wonderful opportunity to work as a faculty member in an accredited program. Among the content-based EAP courses I taught, the college-level introductory writing course was the most challenging. It also resulted in some of my biggest growth. As a learner with little to no proper training in writing, even in my native language, I had to find effective ways to master the structure and voice challenges of academic writing. I then used my experiences and the strategies I developed to create a unique technology-enhanced, and content-based academic writing course. My students demonstrated tremendous improvement in developing their own autonomy and motivation while acquiring content language and strengthening their target language skills. Together, students and I had great fun in courses such as Conversation and Discussion, where students completed the final project in a creative way, by using the school's studio to create a talk show.

Final Project from the Conversation and Discussion Course

Two students brought two different personas, a college professor, and a talk show host. In this video, they discuss conversational challenges between American students and international students, along with strategies to address these challenges.

Project IEP

My international students came to me one day and said, "We are bored. Is there anything we can work on?" “Well yes, students! How about creating an introduction video for our program?”

The Project IEP started just like that. And we made everything on our own. If you take a look at an interesting graphic of a disformed, hollow earth at 02:54, you will see my very first efforts at learning and using Adobe After Effects.

Teaching Graduate Courses at University of Rochester

Although I garnered invaluable ideas and skills through these experiences, I knew I still had much to learn. I wanted to strengthen my knowledge as a researcher and educator by exploring major issues and theories in the field of second language education. So, I applied for the Ph.D. in Teaching, Curriculum, and Change at the Warner School of Education, University of Rochester, where I have had the privilege of teaching multiple graduate courses since 2016. In each of these classes, I helped students take an active role in sharing and enriching our classroom experience, beginning from an asset-based perspective on their prior knowledge and experiences.

Click here to see the selected list of the graduate courses I have taught at Warner.

ED 506 Concepts and Issues in Social Science Research (Online. Doctoral level)
ED 529 Using Qualitative Data Analysis Software (Online. Doctoral level)
ED 409 Language and Literacy in Education (F2F/online. Master’s level)
EDU 435 Theory and Practice in Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages and ESOL (F2F. Master’s level)
ED 480 Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism (F2F/online. Master’s level)

Enriching Students' Experiences at Warner

I actively seek opportunities to enrich students' experiences at Warner. One example is the work I have done to create conference experiences for my masters- and doctoral-level TESOL students. Many of them did not have prior experience presenting at or attending professional learning events like conferences. I organized and chaired the 41st New York State TESOL Applied Linguistics Winter Conference (ALWC) at my school to facilitate opportunities for Warner graduate students and elevate Warner’s TESOL program. With this work, I led a team of 30 student volunteers to design and execute a successful event!

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