I have been teaching the intricacies of English to students in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East for thirty years.  In addition, I teach graduate-level seminars for Oxford Seminars to prepare future ESL teachers for their careers, and I have set up international language schools and been on the development teams for several ESL textbooks. My academic preparation for these tasks includes an M.A. in TEFL from the American University in Cairo, and a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Rhetoric from U.C. Berkeley. 

Like many ESL teachers, I did not set out to teach, much less teach ESL.  But teaching ESL was a wonderful way to pay for the other experiences I wanted, and I discovered that I had a deep affinity for it and learning foreign languages.

Living abroad and teaching ESL are both incredible experiences that I wish everyone could have.  All told, I lived in Europe and the Middle East for eleven years before returning to the United States to teach ESL here.  These experiences have left me feeling that I have lived more than one lifetime in my lifetime.  I’ve danced in the streets of France on an election night; I’ve lived on a tiny kibbutz in northern Israel; I’ve visited the family members of students in villages reachable only by donkey or camel in Egypt; I’ve had to hunker down inside an apartment while friends brought me necessities during anti-American rioting; and I’ve marched with my two-year-old son to the Berlin Wall the day it was torn down.   All this while teaching English to students of all ages and all proficiency levels—from very young children to university students to business men to the wives of military personnel to senior citizens.  And each student I taught, taught me. 

Second Life is my latest adventure.  I started teaching in-world in English City for LanguageLab.com this year.  While trying to create lessons that use this medium to its full advantage, I learned to build, embed, and tweak objects, buildings, and land to give me the props I need for interactive roleplaying and games.  Now I would like to make machinimas of the many activities my students and I do.