Working at the American Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, led me to make many connections including those at the Turkish-American Association. The TAA did many things, but teaching English was an integral part of their mission.  At an event there, someone found out I had a bachelors degree.  That person said, "You have to teach English here."  I attended 2 weeks of training and I was ready (not). That began my 2-year wonderful ESL teaching experience in Turkey and my life experience in education.

Moving after that to Tokyo with ESL teaching experience led me to find the Sony Language Laboratory that taught English to its employees and others from outside the company.  A very different experience was in store in Japan.  Teaching Sony businessmen planning to come to the States was interesting, but teaching a weekly  high school class was really an eye-opener and was even more wonderful. 

Moving back to the States and trying to get a job teaching in San Diego, I discovered the ESL Institute.  That is when I also discovered that I had been faking it for 3 years.  The Institute was fantastic and featured a variety of classes on methods, standards, management, assessment and so many skills I needed to be a better instructor.  I attended every class I could and eventually began to feel good and hopeful about a career in teaching.

Working first in night classes and then full time in the corrections department of the K-12 district I graduated from felt like full circle.  Not the corrections part. The K-12 district part.  It felt good.  Soon, I was the ESL coordinator/instructor managing and teaching in the seven San Diego County jail sites.  I was getting comfortable with my career in education.

When the corrections department decided to help English speakers with an education,  someone was needed to direct the one and only jail site where inmates went that needed a GED. Switching over to HSE was a challenge at first, but for 2 years I was part of a GED machine that graduated a lot of students and changed lives. Along around this time, I earned a masters degree in educational administration as I was spending a lot of time in that area.  

I'm glad I had that degree when an assistant principal position came available.  I really enjoyed being one of two decision makers in a very large adult school.  I continued to teach ESL, but this time in a distance learning format while I carried out my administrative duties as well as got a good look at education in the larger context.  In addition to serving students and instructors, I was fortunate to be able to serve as state president of the California Council of Adult Education, providing support at the state level, helping to coordinate our lobbyist and fighting for adult education funding in Sacramento.

During the 2008-2009 financial meltdown and diminished funding for education, my position was cut and I decided to move to New Mexico where I became the GED coordinator for Doña Ana Community College.  I was hired in part to develop a distance learning program there. I also taught in the classroom during this time.  Around 2015 I met Tina Hite who thought I might be a good fit for a team providing Professional Development (PD) to adult instructors.  So, for eight years, I held that position at DACC and helped out with PD until I moved to Dallas to be near my son and his growing family.  I continued working with Tina while teaching ESL at a community college there.

I moved back to Las Cruces in 2020 and mostly retired but continued to work with Tina and PD which became vitally important when COVID hit and all instructors had to learn to teach online. From the classroom to the back room, education became my career and I have loved every part of it.

My passion for teaching grew out of a comfort level I felt when I got good as an instructor.  I felt I was helping people learn.  It was easy to respect the efforts put into learning English as it is not an easy language. I long for that time. I feel at home in a classroom.  I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to be with learners hungry to be better, so positive and excited about their future.

The future of education in general will remain a human-to-human experience in my hopeful dreams.  We need each other; instructor and learner.  Yes, supplement with everything that can help; AI, online voice and pronunciation practice, online mentoring, encouragement and assessments.  Soon, language learning may be unnecessary as devices/technology will be available to translate any language to any other language instantly and accurately.  Still, can we know the nuances of the words spoken without a face, eyes, breath, arms and body and all the other situational and environmental effects that contribute to meaning being expressed?  I don't know.  I think human to human verbal interchange will always be the only way to truly communicate .

It has been an absolute privilege to be in the field of education. My career has been all with adult learners; dual partners deserving of an answer to the question, "Why do we have to learn this?"