After trying a major in marine Biology in college I realized that my real passion was in the Japanese language and culture.   I loved watching anime in high school and had Japanese friends that were teaching me Japanese.

At first I had thought that languages were not for me. (I had taken 6 years of Latin in middle school and high school and found it boring and uninteresting).  I took Japanese in college (only because the Spanish classes were all filled!) and quickly realized I did enjoy learning languages, especially the Japanese language. I think this was largely due to due to my professor’s incredible ability to teach. She had a way of putting complex ideas into easy to understand terms; she came up with amazing games; and used real world applications instead of needless grammar and vocabulary drills. She would even spend time outside of class to tutor or help someone if they were struggling. Since then, my goal has been to emulate her in the classes that I teach.

After minoring in Japanese I found that the language was fun and I wanted to learn more. But sadly my university did not have a major in Japanese. With a lot of research and help from my advisors, I designed my own major in Japanese at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). 

Designing my own major has given me insights and has furthered my ability to design classes on Outschool.

As part of my major, I was an exchange student in Tokyo at Nihon University. I studied not only the language but the culture and history as well. I fell in love with the culture and history of Japan, which encouraged me to want to live in Japan.

I later got my Masters in Education with a focus on TESOL, using that as a springboard to teach and live abroad. My desire was to travel abroad teaching my language (English) as well as learn more and more about other countries and their languages, while traveling to these countries.

On my first adventure, I went to Japan for two years and taught English under the Japanese Exchange Teaching (JET) Program, where I worked with Elementary and Junior High School students teaching English in a fun and interesting way.

While there, I traveled all over Japan on vacations. I experienced many sights and enjoyed meeting many different people,  while  learning that each prefecture has it’s own history and little bits of their own culture.

On my second adventure after leaving Japan, I went to Vietnam for three years where I taught English,  Math, Science and History there. 

I found that Vietnam was an amazing place to live, with open-minded friendly people, gorgeous views and rich culture.

I enjoy traveling and experiencing new cultures and learning the history and language of that culture. And although my travel has brought me back to America to live, I hope to continue to travel on trips, learn about new countries and share my knowledge with my students.

I want to bestow that desire on my students and help them to achieve their very best.

I love to push myself to learn and grow and love studying many different languages.  I have studied English (to teach), Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Latin.

Through trial and error, I have learned to study and practice languages easily and effectively. From my efforts at learning how to study language, I have learned to teach languages in a way that my students can learn easily and effectively.  I take real-life situations and apply it to a language without any useless grammar or vocabulary drills.

When my student studies a language they will not only learn the language, they will learn the culture and history as well.