language_teaching

Alumna Satomi Kobayashi: Around the World and Back Again

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu Alumni, careers, Featured, language_teaching, newsroom, TFL
Alumna Satomi Kobayashi

Satomi Kobayashi (MATFL ’97).

Growing up in Japan, alumna Satomi Kobayashi (MATFL ’97) always dreamt of traveling the world and volunteering for the good of others. Her practical side led her to the field of language teaching and the Monterey Institute. It turned out to be the perfect environment for both interests.

“While I was still a student at MIIS, I got an offer too hard to resist,” she shares, adding that the offer was for a teaching position at a local private high school that included covering her tuition. While teaching at the high school, she joined Operation Crossroads of Africa and spent her summer setting up youth groups in one of the most impoverished areas of Malawi. She was hooked. The following year, Satomi was off to Nepal to work in the Bhutanese refugee camps. In 2001, she took a sabbatical from teaching and worked for a year as a volunteer for two non-profit organizations in Tanzania.

At that point Satomi was at a crossroads in her life, and her career. “I wanted a family and I also had to think about a steady income,” she says of her decision to return to teaching and to Monterey. “It was not an easy decision, but I realized that most of the people working in the field were either single or not living in the same country or area as their family.” Satomi currently works for the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in the test management division.

“I am very happy with the choices that I made,” she remarks and adds that working at DLI is a little like MIIS in that she gets “to learn about other cultures through differences in customs, food, or from anecdotes and life stories.” Her hope is to retire early and use her income to continue her volunteer work, to fulfill her wishes to “do something good for the community, country, or the world!” She values greatly the balance she has with her family life and job at DLI and says that none of that would have been possible without MIIS.

Alumna Tricia Bean: Nurturing Her “Latin Soul” Through Love of Teaching

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu Alumni, Featured, language_teaching, newsroom, TFL
Tricia Bean (MATFL ’96) and family

Tricia Bean (MATFL ’96) and family.

Growing up in Florida, Tricia Bean (MATFL ’96) had her curiosity about other countries and cultures sparked at a very early age. “I knew a lovely Cuban lady who told me stories about her native country,” says Tricia, adding that as a young girl she developed a desire to travel and master the beautiful Spanish language.

When she was fifteen she went to Maracay, Venezuela as an exchange student with American Field Service (AFS) and “fell in love with the people, the country, the music, the tradition, and the language.” She happily shares that her Venezuelan friends often said she was born in the wrong country with the “soul of a Latina.” She completed her junior year of college in Alcalá de Henares, Spain where Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote de la Mancha, was born.

The international community at MIIS proved the “perfect fit” for Tricia. As a student she worked part-time for the Santa Rita School District in Salinas, and upon graduation she was hired as a bilingual teacher to teach English Language Development (ELD), Spanish, and Spanish for Spanish speakers at Gavilan View Middle School in the district. Her passion and enthusiasm for sharing her love of language and interest in other cultures is inspiring.

During her time at Gavilan View, Tricia took students abroad with the People to People Student Ambassador Program, was honored with the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Scholarship, and spent a year teaching English in Baranquilla, Colombia. Today Tricia is “proud to be among the talented faculty and staff of Carmel High School,” where she and a colleague designed and implemented a program to better meet the literacy needs of native Spanish speakers.

She collaborates regularly with the Institute, bringing students to the Institute’s International Education Day activities each year, participating in local language teacher discussions and hosting MATFL practicum students in her classroom. “I enjoy being able to give back to the institution that has given me so much.”

Learn One Language, Teach Another: ESL Students Lead B.U.I.L.D. Language Classes

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu ESL, Featured, language_learning, language_teaching, newsroom, TFL
Students in the Intensive English Program

Pablo Mezquita (top), Guldana Khamzina, Ayumi Kawano, and Gin Wang, all students in the Intensive English program at the Monterey Institute.

Four students in the Intensive ESL program at the Monterey Institute are taking a broad view of language learning by volunteering to teach beginner courses in their native languages at the same time they are working to improve their own English language skills.

“I believe that it will be very helpful to us in our studies,” says Pablo Mezquita from Spain, who enrolled in the Intensive ESL program to prepare for a graduate degree program in international business law in the United States. He, along with Ayumi Kawano of Japan, Gin Wang of Taiwan, and Guldana Khamzina of Kazakhstan, have volunteered to be a part of the B.U.I.L.D (Beyond YoUrself in Language Development) student club on campus and offer free language lessons in their native Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian.

Ayumi has aspirations to become a language teacher and would love to enroll in the Teaching a Foreign Language program at MIIS. She thinks she might imitate some of the techniques her English teachers use in her Japanese class. Guldana would like to study international policy, preferably at MIIS, but Gin has not quite made up her mind about what direction to take her studies. Fluency in English at a high level is an important factor in each of their future career dreams.

The four have varied opinions about the mild coastal weather in Monterey, but all agree that it is an exceptionally good place to make new friends. The language classes and participation in student club activities they say, is a great way to meet even more people.

All B.U.I.L.D. classes are listed on the Monterey Institute events calendar.