Teach English in Shagou Zhen - Zaozhuang Shi

I chose this topic because of my background as a writer and artist in addition to my professional teaching career, and because I am currently very interested in returning to teaching younger students in particular. I will be traveling to South Korea for two weeks late summer to teach ESL. My sister-in-law owns her own English school and primarily teaches children. This is an opportunity for me to use my ESL skills while earning money and to make connections with Korean families otherwise hesitant to send their children to the US to learn English. First of all, a bit about me: I have a B.A. in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. I am currently an Assistant Professor of English for Temple College, but plan on starting my own tutoring and ESL business so I can be self-employed. As a published writer and artist, I strongly believe in the importance of stories for all learners, but especially English learning in early childhood. First of all, I agree with author and teacher Jonathan Gotschall that as humans we are a storytelling animal, and as such, creating and listening to stories is a primary way to make meaning. Secondly, exposing children to story-telling and creating is a dynamic way to get them engaged in learning. Before I decided to go back to school as a nontraditional student, I was a teacher’s aide for 15 years in my hometown of San Diego, and my students were at the K-6 level. As such, over that period of time, I received extensive training in teaching reading and writing to mostly struggling learners and special education students, such as the phonics program LindaMood Bell. But no matter what the program, they each emphasized or involved narrative/storytelling as a vital component for learning. For example, we would choose a book to reading over an extended time period using books such as the Harry Potter series or Goosebump books. We would create activities based on the reading to help students enhance fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. For very young students, we used phonics books with lots of pictures, which leads me to my next point about how to utilize stories for English learning in early childhood. As the course pointed out, you can use visuals like comics where the students fill in word bubbles to match the drawings. I am working on a comic series and can use my knowledge and skills to create such activities. I also attended a comic workshop last year in Vermont, which taught me how to set a story to words and pictures. I already have implemented creating comic panels into my English classes that I teach at Temple College. Other ways you can use stories with young English learners is by exposing them to Mad Libs (for grammar) and then have them create their own Mad Libs. Another activity I’ve used to both stimulate creativity and fluency is by handing out photos to students wherein they create a story that tells a story about the picture. You can alter this activity for younger students by using pictures from children’s books. All of this is to say that storytelling is enormously effective and engaging in teaching English to early childhood learners as it is to learners in general.