My Profile

 I have been a teacher of ESL/EFL, Spanish and French since the year 2000, working mostly in elementary and high schools.   Since 2010 I have been teaching English exclusively.  My students range from kindergarten all the way through to adults.  I currently enjoy a year's sabbatical in Germany, where I nonetheless teach as a volunteer to refugee children, providing them with academically-oriented drama workshops in German and English.  The center has given me my own room, and the children do role-play that includes content from core disciplines taught at school, such as geography, history, world cultures, art, science and maths. I even teach them yoga - using yoga mats with world maps printed on them, so that they both practice various yoga positions and learn the countries and continents on which their various body parts make contact :). 

Because I love teaching, I have chosen to spend my sabbatical year teaching part-time.  I am currently teach adults in Bonn’s Volkschochschule, a public adult education center.  I also teach English as a volunteer with the German Red Cross and Diakonisches Werk, Bonn und Region.  I also teach refugee children core curriculum subjects first in the German language and then, when they are ready, in English,  I also volunteer with ACT, an German non-profit organization for educating children in third world countries, as a children's animator, in German and English. 

My previous employment was in a primary / middle school in Prague with a Montessori program, teaching English as second language through art, music and drama, and working closely with all the children's classroom teachers and subject specialists.  Therefore my lessons are always multidisciplinary.  Before that, I taught IBDP French and Spanish at the International School of Prague.   I am in regular contact with both schools and worked in them for six and three years respectively. Having a Montessori and International Baccalaureate background, both schools added to my skills and experience in engaging children to learn independently and for its own sake.    I also found creative and concrete ways to teach young children grammar, spelling and literacy, even while they were learning the mechanics of their own (difficult) Czech language at the same time, in the case of the primary school where I worked.  

My key strengths include applying my multi-cultural background and life experience to everything that is involved in the learning experience.  I have extensive exam training experience: the International Baccalaureat, IELTS Cambridge exams for children and also for adults, leading up to C2 and the CPE exam, as well as local state exams and standards from my first teaching engagement at a charter high school  in New York City.  In New York, I also taught home-schooled children whose physical and mental handicaps hindered their ability to attend regular classes in day schools. 

 I also have extensive experience with less formal conversational classes and English in alternative educational environments, using the media of theatrical arts and music (guitar, percussion) to make fun and meaningful lessons for children and adults.

 I own a wealth of teaching materials which have been tried and tested and work well, but I adapt quickly to the individual teaching methods and principles of the school whose team I join.

I find the common ground between the methods and approaches that work for both children and adults, and take joy in my successes in being able to reach both groups of learners, forge meaningful working relationships with them, and inspire them to produce great results.  I have worked with a versatile age range (pre-K through adults) and take joy in creative and dynamic lesson planning and execution.  Most importantly, I have a genuine interest in each and every one of my students.  I use a holistic approach to teaching and learning, which, in the case of young learners, includes having good parental outreach and relationships with the students' families.  I believe in contributing to every school community in a way that goes far beyond the classroom.  I believe that my references support to this claim and to my enthusiasm to learning as a whole. 

I speak eight languages fluently or with a good/high proficiency (English, Greek, Spanish, French, Italian,  German, Czech and Turkish. 

I have lived in several countries (Greece, England, France, Austria, the United States, the Czech Republic and Germany), picking up the language and integrating myself in every place in which I have lived, and I am therefore culturally curious and culturally empathetic with all my students, knowing how to reach them and engage them.