Fall 2014 Recap Part 1: ITO Fun!

So rather than overwhelm you all with an incredibly long post about all the fabulous things I did this fall, I thought I'd space them out a little. You're welcome.

So what better way to start off than with ITO? If you don't know, ITO stands for the Intercultural Teachers Organization, and it's our student club in the HPU MATESOL program. I'm the co-vice president and the treasurer, and it's a lot of fun! ITO is a mix of work and play - we do lots of professional development but we also have fun! I joined ITO during my first semester because I wanted to make friends, and I have loved every ITO event I've gone to! And I even made some friends ;) 

What an attractive group of people, am I right?

Our first even this semester was a social and it was a great success! Normally, TESOL events happen at school, but we had this one in the party room of a nearby apartment building and it was great! Grad and undergrad students and professors all came. Everyone brought food (we are all about the potlucks in the TESOL program) and we played games and chatted and it was great! A huge success, if I do say so!

We also had a booth at Halloween Funfest, which is a big event HPU has the week before Halloween. Clubs and groups have booths, and there are games and candy and costumes and food and it's so fun! The local community gets involved too, and lots of kids come by to play the games and get candy. There's a costume contest and a booth contest, and afterward they show Rocky Horror Picture Show. This year, ITO teamed up with the Future Teachers Club to put together a Toy Story-themed booth.

Toy Story!

And guess what? We won best booth! The prize was a bag of goodies and free tickets to see the new Hunger Games movie a few weeks later! (HPU rented out a theater for it - it was great!) 

TESOL students love a good photo booth.

ITO also hosted an Open Mic event this fall, where we shared teaching activities and got to hang out with a group of visiting teachers-in-training from Brunei, who are about to set off on 2 years of teaching in Cambodia and Laos. Pretty cool, huh?

We also scored 10 lucky people memberships to HALT, the Hawaii Association of Language Teachers (for all languages, not just English!) and attended their fall symposium. The theme was computer-assisted language learning, which was actually one of the classes I took this fall, so it was pretty cool to learn even more about it. (I even downloaded a cool app called Memrise to learn Basque for free! BASQUE! So cool.)

This spring, we have some cool upcoming events as well, including the Hawaii TESOL conference and a hike with the professors. I'm pretty excited!

Hello there!

Well hello everyone!

It's currently fall finals week here at HPU, so as you can imagine, I'm a little bit busy! I promise to make some better posts next week about my time at HPU so far and what I'm looking forward to for next semester, but for now I thought I would start by introducing myself :)

My name is Sara, and I'm just finishing up my third semester here at HPU in the MATESOL program. (What's MATESOL? Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages... try saying that three times fast!) I am originally an East Coast girl from Baltimore, MD, so I'm a pretty long way from home out here in the middle of the Pacific! (It's December and I wore shorts yesterday, which is something I don't think I'll ever get used to.) I got my B.A. from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and studied Political Science and Spanish Literature. After that, I worked for AmeriCorps teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) for a year back in Baltimore before deciding that I wanted to go to grad school!

In addition to my classes here at HPU, I work as a Spanish and Writing tutor in the Center for Academic Success. That's a lot of fun because I get to meet HPU students from all sorts of programs! I'm also the co-Vice President/Treasurer of our TESOL student group, the Intercultural Teachers Organization (ITO). Needless to say, I'm pretty busy!

Outside of school-related things, I like reading pretty much anything, mastering new recipes in the kitchen, trying new kinds of tea (I love tea!), and exploring all that Oahu has to offer.

This winter break, I'll be working once a week as a tutor, starting on my portfolio, and relaxing after my busiest semester yet! I'm really excited to use some of my downtime to be a tourist again and do some fun Hawaii things! What are you all up to this winter?