Narrating Their Lives: Examining English Language Teachers' Professional Identities within the Classroom

Biographical Statements

143 Biographical Statements1 Lía D. Kamhi-Stein, Ph.D., California State University, Los Angeles. I am originally from Argentina where I was an EFL learner. I graduated from Universidad del Salvador with a degree as a Certified Public Translator (CPT) but decided to obtain an EFL teaching degree from the same university because I felt isolated and unfulfilled working as a translator. My teaching career started without professional preparation when I was 18 years old and continued while I was studying to become a CPT. After teaching for several different British English– oriented institutes and obtaining my teaching degree, I was hired to teach EFL at Instituto Cultural Argentino Norteamericano (the Buenos Aires, Binational Center), where I later became an academic coordinator and an academic secretary (an academic position). I married my husband, a Business and Law librarian at California State University, Los Angeles, and migrated to Southern California where I have lived since 1990. I am a professor in the TESOL M.A. program at California State University, Los Angeles, and have published articles, chapters , and edited volumes. I am a co-founding member of the TESOL’s NNEST Caucus (now an interest section) (with G. Braine and J. Liu) and served as President of CATESOL (2002–2003) and as Member-atLarge on TESOL’s Board of Directors (2004–2007). More importantly, I am Hannah’s mom. Valerie J. Callet, Ed.D., Orange County Department of Education. I decided I wanted to be a teacher when I was in 7th grade. I completed my Bachelor’s in Education at Penn State University. Then I joined 1 The authors’ affiliations in this section are the ones the authors held in June 2013. The affiliations provided in their narratives are those the authors had at the time they wrote their autobiographical narratives. 144 biographical statements the Peace Corps where I taught EFL in Bulgaria and met and married my husband (a Bulgarian). Our daughter Ani was born in 2010. In the United States, I taught English in an alternative education program (the one described in this book) while earning my Master’s in TESOL at California State University, Los Angeles. Later, I earned a Doctorate at the University of Southern California. I have taught in a variety of settings, but my passion is teaching at risk youth. Jessie Chen, CEO, Asian Debate League, Taipei, Taiwan. I am originally from Korea and immigrated to the U.S. when I was 11 years old as a 5th grader. I started out my middle school years as an ESL learner in Los Angeles School District. I graduated from California State University, Los Angeles, with a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature, and with a credential to teach high school English. However, I decided to further pursue my master’s in TESOL from the same university because I wanted to be able to teach ESL students. My teaching career started while I was still working on my M.A. thesis. I was hired by Santee High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District and taught high school English for a couple of years; during this time, I successfully organized and coached a high school debate team that won 4th place in 2008 and 2nd place in the 2009 Global Debates competition. In 2010, I moved to Taipei, Taiwan, to rejoin my husband and kids after six years of separation and started my own debate academy. In 2012, two of my Taipei Debate Academy students received the National Junior Forensics League award. Jeremy C. Kelley, Ph.D. Candidate, Applied Linguistics Program, University of California, at Los Angeles. As a doctoral candidate in applied linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, I have taught a range of English as a second or foreign language courses, as well as undergraduate applied linguistics courses for the departmental major. I currently teach as an adjunct professor within the MA TESOL program at California State University, Los Angeles, where I have had the pleasure of training graduate students in preparation 145 Biographical Statements for their future careers as language teaching professionals. My primary research interests include first and second language teaching/ pedagogy, the ethnography of communication, and discourse analysis as a methodological practice. Hee-Jin Kim, Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. I was born and raised in Seoul, Korea, but also spent some time growing up in the U.S. In addition, I...