Dear Hiring Staff,
I welcome you to read my work biography as my family and I excitedly prepare to participate in the international recruitment season for the 2021-2022 school year. As many have experienced some of the most difficult times of their lives due to covid-19, my family and I have been no stranger to hardship. China’s border closure and the pregnancy and birth of our second baby girl did not allow us to return to our home in China, where with much mutual sadness we were forced to part ways with Shanghai American School (SAS), an incredible institution that helped us grow immensely as educators. My work with SAS and previous institutions as an English as an Additional Language (EAL) international educator for the past eight years has focused on holistic student learning and inclusivity for all as well as community leadership for socio-environmental initiatives. My work history has prepared me to be a competitive applicant for the best international schools in the world, a career path I am grateful to have pursued for the many adventures and opportunities it brings.
I began my teaching career in Peru at a language school for adults as Director of English Language Learning, and with the joy that international life gave me I sought a Master’s certification in International Baccalaureate Education from Bethel University with a focus on PYP-EAL for students. This led to my first international teaching K-12 position at the American School of Kuwait (ASK) as an EAL specialist for students in grades 1-5. At ASK, I provided small group intervention instruction for EAL students while collaborating alongside teachers and our learning support team to design and adjust curriculum that best met the needs of the individual student. In my four years at ASK, I had over 20 nationalities of students in my classrooms with varying English language capabilities and a range of linguistic backgrounds. Key components to our success involved ensuring that instruction and our classroom community were sensitive to and built upon culturally different ways of learning, behaving, and using language, incorporating responsive classroom and positive discipline strategies. I regularly conferenced with teachers to provide thoughtful and specific feedback on the cognitive and academic skill intervention necessary for learning and social development for ELL’s. Through the exploration of children’s literature and film, remedial writing and reading, and encouragement of creative agency, I designed curriculums which inspired students to unlock a passion for learning. I endeavored to create a space, often for first time language learners, that was positive, inclusive, and a creative community where students could explore language, learn content in fun and accessible ways, and grow a deep respect for new cultures from their peers. Please see my Elementary EAL website for details: https://sites.google.com/ask.edu.kw/elltoolbox. Extracurricular activities at SAS included my work as a Sustainability Coordinator at ASK (see my sustainability page at https://www.roxanneheuschkel.com/domestic-workers), where I launched and ran after school student initiatives focused on environmental health and service learning. As campus-wide coordinator, I grew ASK’s sustainability program to be successful in all three divisions, and worked with sponsors in each division to ensure continued success and guidance for cross-campus initiatives. I received a government grant from Kuwait to build hydroponic gardening systems for native plant species, and using this experience I attended many workshops for design thinking, social justice, and participatory action research, including Harvard Gradate School’s Design Discovery for a summer certification in Landscape Architecture focusing on sustainability programs. In conjunction with my work at SAS, I worked in evenings and weekends as an Art and Social Change Specialist for a non-profit organization, Project 189, who fought to support vulnerable migrant women who had fallen victims of indentured servitude and human trafficking. In addition to using professional photography for many national campaigns, I was able to collaborate Project 189’s missions with student-led campaigns, including the Technovation challenge, where a team of female high school students built an app for reporting human trafficking in Kuwait. And finally, on weekends I worked with a women’s production team to shoot professional photography for Kuwait’s royal family weddings, an invaluable experience for my work as a photographer.
After four years at ASK, my husband and I moved to Shanghai while pregnant with our first child, where I took a year off to raise her. I accepted a position as a High School EAL Specialist at Shanghai American School (SAS) for the 2019-2021 school years, where my focus at SAS was to co-teach and collaborate with the HS English department, targeted at EAL students in grades 9 & 10. I received a year of training for an International EAL certificate from the Principals’ Training Center in conjunction with The College of New Jersey Graduate school, a study which proved essential for my success in this new role and an incredible learning experience with Dr. Gini Rojas. As an EAL and English co-teaching specialist, I engaged in a collaborated-sheltered immersion model, supporting SAS’s philosophy of multilingualism, the students’ home language, and a celebration of home cultures. In SAS’s co-planning/teaching model, I was seen as an equal to English content teachers as a co-teaching content specialist partner. Alongside my English literature teaching partners, I planned for and engaged language learners’ multiple language capabilities to negotiate academic content (I.e. translanguaging). I worked diligently with our English head of department and literacy coach to adopt the California ELD language and academic standards and Disciplinary Transfer Goals (DTG’s) in alignment with the Common Core’s English standards. For my EAL students, I expected high levels of achievement for ALL students, and sought to elevate students’ active engagement across all English literature lessons by helping the content teacher explicitly teach language in tandem with content and critical thinking. And finally, a primary function of my job was to monitor and communicate progress via portfolios for EAL students and identify language needs of particular students within my collaborative teams. Outside of my role as EAL specialist at SAS, I sponsored Jane Goodall’s High School Roots & Shoots program where I supported student-led initiatives in campus wide composting and waste reduction. This led to a study of waste management through our cafeteria and cafes, and a contractual agreement was made to change plastic wear for paper products and reusable dish-ware.
Thank you for reading my professional teaching journey and I look forward to speaking with you about a future role with your institution!