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This is the initial stage of a production blog for this project. I am producing/directing a video about the experience of living and teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in S. Korea.

From 2002-2003, I taught EFL in Korea, having never taught children or the English language before in my life. I had never been to Asia before, either. Everything, and I mean everything was new, shocking, exciting, frustrating, thought-provoking, intriguing (often a combination of all of the above).

When I returned to the states, I entered an M.A. program in Linguistics at Ohio University in Athens, OH, a small town in South Eastern Ohio. I was blessed with opportunities to teach and learn in my two years at O.U., and I had incredible professors who inspired me to continue teaching. Since then I have taught EFL in the People's Republic of China, and I have taught ESL (English as a Second Language) to international graduate students at Cornell University and SUNY Binghamton.

To continue the story of how this video project came to be, I have to back the truck up a bit. In 1998, I received an M.F.A. in film and video production from the Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.). My thesis was a feature-length screenplay. Life went on, I did other things, including teaching film and writing, and working as a video editor for the Ohio Historical Society. Then things changed (a lot) and I chose to go to Korea to live and work. Since that time, I have taught Screenwriting and Academic English at Ithaca College, as well as the ESL classes mentioned above.

So, as you can see, I have two degrees in two fields, but with this project, I am pulling the best of my experiences together to fulfill a mission - to help other new teachers in Korea have a positive experience with something of a guide to help them find their way.

That's a brief introduction to who I am and what this project is about.