My approach to language learning is one that is rooted in my own experiences as someone who grew up in a bilingual environment in the Soviet Union. Besides being expected to be fluent in Russian and Ukrainian, I was also expected to learn German in school. I think this experience had such an impact on me at a young age that I continue to carry the lessons learned from this into all of my language courses. I truly disliked learning German. Looking back, I realized that there was nothing inherent in the language that made it difficult; it was the pedagogical approach that made it difficult. I believe that this experience, in part, has propelled me to learn an additional six languages and make teaching language my career. I now take on learning new languages as a challenge and embrace holistic cultural learning as a part of it as well.
I incorporate several approaches into my language classroom, but the central one is ensuring students have fun. This may run counter to other pedagogical approaches in other disciplines, which may, for example, rely on encouraging students to question their own assumptions about knowledge. Learning a language can be an intimidating experience, so it is paramount that I make learning it approachable for every student. My courses incorporate cultural learning, songs, art, food, history, and geography. When students genuinely enjoy language learning, it helps them learn and retain the material and keeps them motivated to continue on to the next level. It is also infectious; students who genuinely enjoy themselves create a supportive and encouraging atmosphere in the classroom that the instructor cannot completely accomplish alone. This also means that students feel more open about making mistakes in the language, which is the best way to learn a language. When they make mistakes, they not only learn how to improve that area of their language skills but also become more aware of their own learning style. This makes it much easier for me to become attentive to that learning style and to make sure it is incorporated in my work with that student as well as the classroom as a whole. This, in turn, builds their confidence because they find out that all of their peers also have different learning styles and skills. This is across students and types of classes: from my more traditional academic classes to my continuing education classes, which have students with diverse backgrounds, ages and learning styles.
My own life-long learning approach to languages drives my pedagogy in the classroom. This spurred my interest in developing an Italian language program at NSCC. I had been in the process of becoming fluent in Italian when I had the opportunity to study at Dante Alighieri School in Rome, Italy. During that time, I had time to reflect on the ways in which I engage students in my classroom, which renewed my empathy with them in learning a language from the beginning stages to fluent speaker. When I returned to Seattle, I began to develop the Italian program at NSCC in 2009, which continues to be the only academic Italian program in the Seattle Community Colleges system. Since 2019, I’ve been a full-time traveler and housesitter teaching online courses to individuals and groups. It’s great fun to teach Spanish, for example, from Mallorca, and Italian from Sardinia.
