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PRESENTERS
Graduate students from San Francisco State University
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
MARIA BASTIAS
María comes to us from the south of Chile. In her country, she studied translation at Universidad de Concepción and English pedagogy at Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción. In 2015, she started the MATESOL program at SF State. Since then, she has worked with immigrants and refugees, both teaching and developing curriculum. Currently, she teaches pre-academic skills to international students at the American Language Institute. María loves teaching all students, but she is especially interested in working with the Latino community. In the future, she hopes to work with indigenous communities in her country and to research their vernacular languages.
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
CHRISTOPHER COLWELL
Christopher Colwell began working with kids and teaching English in Panama as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 2010. After Panama, he taught briefly in China, Korea, and Turkey, in public and private elementary schools and universities between 2012 and 2014. Upon returning to the U.S., Christopher began teaching at the Berkeley Adult School where he discovered a passion for teaching the adult ESL community. Not long after starting at the adult school, Christopher enrolled in the SF State MATESOL program and learned more about how to better serve his adult learners and meet their needs. Christopher hopes to continue to work at the adult school but also teach in colleges and universities, both in the U.S. and abroad.
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
MICHAEL GIBBONS
After he retired from a long career in business, Michael wanted to embark on a new career in education. An avid reader of literature and history, and a world traveler, he was influenced in becoming an ESL and EFL teacher when he encountered an rapidly increasing world population of emerging English speakers. His first teaching experience was as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Michael is happiest when he is teaching his ESL class at the Canal Alliance and tutoring at San Francisco State’s Language Assistance Center. Helping others to succeed in language learning is the contribution to life that he values most.
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
MEAGAN LAROSE
After completing an Associate’s Degree in Spanish, Meagan spent a year teaching English in Southern Mexico where she discovered that her love was not for teaching but for language itself. She decided to return to the US to pursue her BA in Linguistics. After graduating summa cum laude, she entered the MA Linguistics program at SF State where she has done most of her work in English discourse analysis, Spanish linguistics, and creole studies. Her research interests include narrative analysis, translation, language in contact, and historical linguistics.
KEVIN ALCIATI
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
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Kevin Alciati’s English teaching experience began in the late summer of 2005 in Wakayama, Japan. While living there, he was able to experience the joy of learning a new language and meeting new people, as well as the challenge of adapting to a new lifestyle in new and unfamiliar surroundings. However, through those experiences, he was also able to learn some of the greatest lessons in his life. After joining the M.A. TESOL program at SF State, he was taught just how valuable those life lessons were. These lessons continue to influence and shape his own teaching practices, and he hopes that his teaching will help others just as so many have helped him along the way in this journey.
STEVEN CHINNAVASO
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
After five years of teaching science and music at the middle and high school levels in California, Steve took a trip to Guatemala to learn Spanish and ended up living there for two years. During that time, he discovered the richness of living simply in local communities abroad and decided to spend the next 10 years working and volunteering in the rural towns of Timor-Leste, the fertile rice fields of Thailand, and the bustling city streets of Cambodia. In those years overseas, he developed a passion for teaching English and returned to the United States to pursue a Master’s in TESOL at SF State. He has been inspired by his professors, mentors, and peers during this short yet fruitful stint in graduate school and hopes to apply his newfound knowledge to a lifelong exploration of people and cultures through teaching.
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
DOUG CRONYN
Douglas Cronyn is currently a student teacher at City College of San Francisco and will be graduating from SF State in December 2017 with a master's degree in TESOL and Certificate in Teaching Composition. He received his B.A. in American Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Multiple Subject Teaching Credential from Cal State University, Monterey Bay. He has been teaching since 2000, including internationally in China and Niger, as well as locally in Bay Area public schools. At SF State, Douglas has enjoyed the opportunity to reflect upon and refine his teaching practices, including curriculum construction and positioning students as language researchers. After graduating, he looks to teach academic English at the university level.
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
BENJAMIN HUYNH
Ben always had an appetite for teaching, a career that he wished to embark on since high school as a result of having the privilege to be a student of a few dedicated and inspirational teachers. Ben always believed that learning about and from students are some of the most rewarding aspects of teaching. Language classes had always been Ben’s favorite class throughout his academic career but Ben was finally able to fully experience the difficulty of learning a new language and culture during his time in South Korea. That difficulty lessened due to having a supportive community of language learners. After leaving South Korea, Ben decided to become an ESL/EFL teacher in hopes to offer learners a positive and effective learning experience.
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
PHAN LY
Phan Ly moved to the United States as a teenager from Vietnam. She enrolled in TESOL classes for her undergraduate minor with the intention to improve her own English. Her passion for language and culture grew stronger when she realized TESOL classes answered many of her questions about her personal struggle that she encountered daily as a non-native speaker. This led her to pursue a Master’s degree in TESOL at SF State to help other people like herself learn English. While in school, she has taught both community-based ESL and intensive ESL. She hopes to continue to serve the ESL communities in the Bay Area upon finishing her degree.
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Anchor 9
The Fall 2017 Class of SF State MATESOL Graduates
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