Questions and answers

              Why are you teaching English?

Mostly because I had this awesome opportunity to interact with some inspirational teachers throughout my education process and even if I had no intention of starting my teaching career #checkoutmyinitial degrees, I decided that people deserve this experience. It is hard to be a working mom and to also learn English or to go to college, build a career and ... learn English, so then I wanted to find a way to ease this process.

      What are your strengths as a teacher?

Hmmm…I am calm, very calm and I love to laugh and to make others laugh. I love people and that helps me conquer any difficulty in teaching.

         What are your weaknesses as a teacher?

        Ohhh sometimes I take it personally…if someone is frustrated with learning or I don’t know, maybe they hate English I get too involved sometimes.

      What are your teaching methods?

I never use textbooks, I find them boring. I get to know the student then I create materials for their learning style. There are many adults for example who want to learn but have no patience for full on grammar lessons. I improvise by using conversation and real life circumstances like: hey you are on the bus and you are a bit lost, what do you do? (in this case I would be teaching directions, asking for directions etc.)

I also use cards, a lot, visual and videos and I love to read real articles that spark awesome conversation.

                    What is your educational background?

Well I studied in USA, and then I worked as a volunteer for a health program and that made me think about teaching. When I really got into it I was already in Romania and I worked for a company that was mentoring foster kids then I got hired by Cambridge and that’s when I learned through courses and many meeting with talented people how to do this.

I have to admit that the real tool is my own research, I always search for methods that are related to the way human brain works and the way an individual can relate to a language.

                How do you handle a difficult students?

This one is a bit hard. Have I had a difficult student? Oh yes!! But as a student I was always the very shy one so this one is my expertise domain, but I did learn how to handle to difficult ones too.

Many times I search for the cause: boredom- because they already know the info so that means I have to step it up, or they are not challenged and that is ok, because I can give that student something to catch his mind.

Of course there is that case of plain mean and disrespectful people, in which case I just try to talk it out and see if I can solve it, if not I might offer my full attention to someone who appreciates it.

            How does a skype session work?

Similar to a regular class, we will go through a few exercises: might start with some warm up and do some pronunciation, some vocabulary, then a bit of grammar, maybe reading that leads into conversation and at the end I try to focus on relaxed conversation. I might add some cards, some new expressions depending on that day’s subject. Every lesson has a focus for example: today we learn about food, we look at pictures, we pronounce them, we check out a recipe and we read something about food, maybe check out a restaurant menu, as for conversation we might act out how to order food, or how the person prepares something.

All the written parts are given in pdf format and the visuals are shown through screen share- my screen on your computer.