My name is Tammy and I do recruitment for the U.S. Department of State’s English Language Fellow (ELF) Program. I also work full-time as an Assessment Editor for CTB McGraw-Hill, where I am using the knowledge I gained during graduate school to help create strong and interesting test items for a national test that will be coming out in a few years. I thought I’d talk a little about what the ELF Program is and how I got to doing what I’m doing now.

I was in Japan from 2007-2010 teaching at a high school in Ishikawa Prefecture (that little peninsula that sticks out on the western coast of Japan). I went there immediately after completing my undergraduate degree (in English and Spanish) and had only planned to be there for a year. However, I was at an amazing school where I was allowed to create my own lessons, teach my own classes, and generally given the opportunity to develop myself until I felt I could go no further on my own.

After two years of teaching, I decided that I was really enjoying teaching English as a second language and began researching well-respected graduate programs back in the U.S. After electing to stay in California, I ended up at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where I completed my MA TESOL degree in a year and a half.

The Monterey Institute has a (very) challenging MA TESOL program, but it gave me the theoretical background that I had been missing when I was teaching as a JET and allowed me to merge my experiences as a JET with the “best practices” I was learning. I also had the opportunity to teach in special programs (including a few Japanese student groups) at their Intensive English Program. I definitely had a lot of growing pains as a teacher – I had to learn to meld my old “teacher” identity with the new one I was trying to create – but I’m a much stronger and more confident teacher than I was after three years in Japan.

After graduating, my experience as a teacher abroad helped me to become a recruiter for the English Language Fellow Program. English Language Fellows work on U.S. Embassy projects, typically teaching English at the university level, but also developing teacher training workshops, organizing professional conferences, and designing and implementing projects that match up with their own interests. It is a grassroots cultural exchange program and an educational movement, which happens to pay decently and have a lot of respect in the field. If you’re interested, you can learn more about it at www.elfellowprogram.org. The program is only available to U.S. citizens with a Master’s degree and English teaching experience.

Since returning from the JET Program, I’ve found a lot of ways to stay connected to it. I’m a part of the San Francisco Bay Area’s AJET Alumni group and am also involved in the Bay Area Chapter of the CATESOL (the statewide professional group for English language instructors). If you’re looking for ways to stay connected to the Japanese or ESL teaching communities, AJET and TESOL are two great places to get started.

There are a lot of different paths you can take after JET, but if you’re interested in continuing to teach English to non-native speakers, I’m happy to give any advice I can. I will also encourage you to check out the Monterey Institute’s website (www.miis.edu), even if you’re not considering teaching English or pursuing graduate school. I like to think of their website as a menu, with many career options in front of you.

Happy teaching and if you have any questions about the English Language Fellow Program or how to become involved in the ESL field, feel free to shoot me an email: elfp @ miis.edu – I’m the only one at that email address.

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