Greetings,
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to our Blog. I have taken on the task of blogging about information related to supporting Teachers of Additional Language Learners. My dear friend and mentor, Dr. Sylvia Helmer has been the founder and blogger of this particular site for a number of years but has stepped down.
My name is Sandy Krishna and I am an English language educator in the Lower Mainland. I have over 20 years of teaching experience, both here in British Columbia as well as in Ontario. I began my career as a classroom teacher in Toronto before moving to Vancouver about 15 years ago. Since moving to B.C., I have worked at a number of schools in Vancouver and Burnaby. My current assignment is working as an ELL teacher in Burnaby.
As an immigrant myself, I have first-hand experience of the challenges facing many of our newcomers entering our education system from Kindergarten to the post-secondary level. Practical knowledge comes from many years of learning with and from my students. My academic knowledge has come from completing my teacher training at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto as well as UBC’s Language and Literacy Education program over ten years ago. More recently, I completed Simon Fraser University’s Graduate Diploma in Education – Teaching in Multilingual, Multicultural Schools. This program was timely and relevant given the super-diversity of our growing school communities. I am currently working on my Masters in Education at SFU.
I would like to share my learning with you, with the intention of growing with you, in our efforts to provide ELLs with the best learning opportunities possible. It is my hope that this site will support fellow educators as well as parents of ELLs who may be in need of guidance to maximize their child’s learning potential. Thank you for taking the time to visit our Blog. I would encourage you to explore the extensive array of past postings to spark your thinking about what you might want to learn more about now and in the future. Your input and feedback are welcome. I am also open to suggestions of topics you would like to see addressed in the coming weeks and months.
Let’s build an excellent and helpful Blog for all who support ELLs. We can do it together!
Warm regards,
Sandy Krishna
Supporting Teachers of Additional Language Learners 