Teacher to Teacherpreneur

Anastasiia Martinez is a creative bilingual teacher who is a new teacherpreneur.  Find out why she thinks that teachers should take risks, engage in professional and self-development and why native/non-native doesn't matter in the world of teacherpreneurship.

Anastasiia, can you start off by telling us where you teach?

I teach English Language Arts and English Language Development classes at a public middle school in Pittsburg, California in the United States.

How long have you been teaching?

It’s my first year at a public school. Before I jumped on a middle school teaching journey, I’d taught at several private language schools for 7 years. I’ve also been teaching English online for 5 years and I’m absolutely loving it! I wouldn’t say that an online classroom is completely different from a traditional one. I just have to use different tools when I teach online.

Can you describe a typical teaching day?

My day usually starts very early. I like...

Gwen Zeldenrust and Lynn Schneider took up the challenge of producing a video and teaching materials to teach pragmatics. They are both talented and creative teacherpreneurs residing in Canada.

You and Lynn worked together on Impressions:  Making Positive Impressions in Conversation Video Program. How did the idea come about?

G:  The idea for Impressions first came about when I started teaching ELT (English Language Training – a program for internationally trained immigrants to Canada). In the beginning I wasn't quite sure what I needed to teach these students because they had high levels of English. I finally understood that they needed to learn about how we use English in this culture.

Did you find many materials to teach pragmatics?

G:  No, I had a lot of difficulty finding resources to support my lessons. I find that teaching pragmatics is very abstract when using text based resources. I really needed to show the students how to do it. Using video...