Writing, Teaching, & Technology EJ's Way

EJ Sepp teaching his current level-6 class.

NYLC instructor EJ Sepp and a group of post-advanced students headed to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for a class project last session. Their task was to track down different types of hipsters, observe one, then write a short essay or poem about the person. They were to watch and take photos from afar lest they bother anyone. With the neighborhood being the current hip hangout and home to New York City artists and musicians, the students found no shortage of subjects to covertly follow, take pictures of, and write about.

"I told them to think of how they viewed the life of these people," EJ says, "what's important to them; what their values are."

Their writings, photos, and drawings have been compiled into a self-published booklet called "My Hipster" and is now at the Brooklyn Art Library as part of the library's Sketchbook Project, which allows patrons to add their work to its shelves for the price of a blank notebook. This task was one of the students' favorites, but it was just one of several in the 8-week Reading and Writing course, which was also designed to introduce students to different neighborhoods in the city and teach them about each area's personality.

Teaching, dancing, & decision-making with Adriane

Adriane teaching her academic class in reading & writing.

If you were asked to find similarities between TESOL and dance, what would you come up with? Anyone not working in either field would probably dismiss any commonality between the two unless, of course, you consider the possibility of teachers dancing in class, which as we know is not totally out of the question.

If you dance or teach for a living, you're probably more apt to point out connections--dancers convey messages to an audience, while teachers do do their share of entertaining. However, if you dance AND teach, then the similarities stand out more and the connections deepen.

Adriane Lee is all too familiar with these similarities and connections. As one of NYLC's senior ESL instructors, she's logged in countless hours lesson planning, teaching, and brainstorming for the ESL classroom--more than 6 years worth. Her background in dance, however, goes back further as a young girl of about 8 in Orange County, California, where dancing to MTV videos solely for fun led to ballet lessons as a teenager and later helped her decide to change her focus from physics to dance at the University of California at Berkeley.

Ryan Lee's teaching & learning

Ryan Lee, one of NYLC's senior teachers, uses a teaching style that is popular among students.

When Ryan Lee received his Bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2008, he was ready to head overseas and immerse himself in a different culture. Having taken some Spanish classes in college, he chose Ecuador and signed up to volunteer for one year teaching English in its capital city of Quito with World Teach, a nonprofit NGO started by a group of students from Harvard University. During this stint abroad, he lived with a local family, taught EFL to high school students, and boosted his Spanish skills significantly.