MAT-ESOL Faculty and Advisors

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Lauren Alderfer

• Ph. D. Global Educational Leadership, Union Institute and University
• M.A.T. School For International Training
• B.I.S. School For International Training
• Website

Dr. Lauren Alderfer is an EAL (English as-an-Additional Language) specialist whose professional experience has spanned the globe. As an educator for over 30 years, she has worked at all levels- from graduate studies at SIT Graduate Institute in the USA, down to Grade One in US-based overseas schools. As an education consultant Lauren trains teachers in overseas schools and develops benchmarks in EAL writing and EAL program design and assessment in international school settings.

After living in India for over a decade, Lauren now divides her time between India and the Americas. Her ability to blend a Western perspective with the deep spirituality of the East invites educators to cultivate their inner lives in the daily act of teaching while developing mindfulness and compassion. She has written books on mindfulness both for teachers and children. In addition, her collaboration with the Tibetan refugee community in India has resulted in several children’s books. These books aim to preserve Tibetan oral genre while communicating Tibet’s cultural values of compassion and mindfulness.

 

Marti Anderson

• PhD California Institute of Integral Studies
• MAT School for International Training

Marti Anderson is a teacher educator based in Bangkok, Thailand.  She has taught teachers at the graduate level for more than 20 years. She conducts a range of teacher training and professional development activities for teachers in South-East Asia and beyond.  During her career, Marti has provided professional development and training for teachers in dozens of countries on 6 continents.  Marti's doctoral studies focused on learning and change in human systems with special attention to how education can be transformational to both individuals and the groups they are part of.  Marti is passionate about supporting teachers to do their best work no matter what context they work within.  A prevailing interest is exploring what goes on "inside and between" people in education (Stevick 1980), and steadily moving towards a greater understanding of an inner and outer pedagogy of peace.

Beverley Burkett

• MAT, School for International Training
• BA Honours, Rhodes University
• BA, University of Port Elizabeth

Beverley Burkett has been a language teacher educator for more than 25 years. In South Africa, Beverley was head of the Language in Education Unit at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth for more than 20 years. She engaged in research, teaching, and curriculum development, with a particular focus on teaching and learning in multilingual contexts and the development of the South African language, isiXhosa, in educational contexts. She is co-author of an ESL textbook series, Keys to English, and was team leader of a research project investigating the impact of additive bilingual (English–isiXhosa) curriculum delivery in a rural school in South Africa. She has presented academic papers at international conferences in the UK, the US, Europe, Africa, and Hong Kong, and has been an invited speaker at southern African conferences.

Beverley, who speaks Afrikaans, French, and German, was an active member of a community-based organization that worked for peace and justice in South Africa. When not teaching, she enjoys yoga and has an avid interest in design.

Ray Clark

• MA Brown University (Linguistics)
• BA  University of New Hampshire (English)

Ray Clark has been involved in education since 1962 as a high school English Teacher, Peace Corps Volunteer teacher trainer in Nigeria, teacher of English as a Second Language at the School for International Training, for USAID in Islamabad, Pakistan, for CitiBank in Istanbul, Turkey.

Also at the School for International Training he has held a variety of assignments. He was on the Peace Corps Training staff at SIT as language coordinator, TESOL Instructor, and Project Director for training programs for Iran, India, Korea, and West Africa. He was the Director of the Master of Arts in Teaching Program as well as a faculty member teaching  a variety of courses, including Approaches, Four Skills, and Applied English Linguistics. He also supervised MAT candidates in every New England state and developed and/or managed ESL projects in New England, Louisiana, and Somalia. He directed a two-year project for the Peace Corps to develop materials for uncommonly taught languages.

Currently he is adjunct faculty at SIT, supervising student teachers and teaching introductory Turkish, and adjunct faculty at Southern New Hampshire University where he teaches for the University of Hanoi MA EFL Program.  Since 1980, he and four partners have developed Pro Lingua Associates, a publishing company specializing in ESL materials. He is vice-president and senior Editor, and has written several textbooks.

Caleb Clark

• MPS, Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. 
• MA, Educational Technology, San Diego State Unviversity.
• BA, Arizona State University.

Caleb is the director of the EdTech Masters program, where he also teaches and coordinates academic technology support. He has been a Web geek since 1994 and an educational technologist since 1999. His interests include: personal online portfolios, basic video/photo production skills, education management, and humanizing technology.  

Before coming to Marlboro, Caleb worked as a instructional designer, Webmaster, online community manager, high school teacher, and journalist in and around San Francisco and New York City. Caleb regularly presents at conferences and publishes.

He is on the board of Vita-Learn,  Neighborhood School House, and is a technology integration consultant for Putney Central Elementary School.

Sean Conley

• EdD Columbia University (candidate)
• MAT TESOL School for International Training
• BA Warner Pacific College
• TESOL Cert. Warner Pacific College

Sean is Associate Dean for Marlboro College Graduate School in Brattleboro, Vermont. For the last decade his focus has been on the intersection of technology and adult learning, examining the challenge of the digital divide, technology in the developing world, the open source software movement and the role of experiential learning and reflection in on-line and blended programs. He has served on the faculties of The New School, The School for International Training and Tokyo Jogakkan College.  His work in TESOL has taken him to Algeria, Japan, Korea, Serbia, Ukraine, Kyrgystan, the Republic of Georgia and the UAE.  He has consulted on projects for the U.S. Department of State, The Soros Foundation and World Learning.  He’s been an invited speaker at IATEFL Serbia, IATEFL Hungary, TESOL Arabia, Korea TESOL and the Japan Associate of Language Teachers conference.

Steve Cornwell

• Ed.D. Temple University
• MAT School for International Training
• MFA Virginia Tech University
• MA Wake Forest University

Steve Cornwell is a Professor at Osaka Jogakuin College, Osaka, Japan, where leads the Life Long Learning program and is Vice Chair of the university’s English Language Program. Steve began his teaching career at the Language Institute of Japan after completing his MAT in TESOL at the School for International Training, Brattleboro, VT.  Since then he has taught children, teenagers, and adults in conversation classes, business courses, and intensive programs. He has taught, presented, and/or conducted teacher training sessions in Bangladesh, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the US.

His professional interests include examining students’ identities and investment in language learning, developing and evaluating curriculums, examining learning from the inside as a student/language learner, and helping apprentice new teachers to the world of research and publishing. In his spare time, he and his wife Yoshiko like to travel, watch movies, and eat ethnic food (but not always in that order!)

Sedia Dennis

• MAT, School for International Training
• BA, The Evergreen State College

Sedia currently teaches academic reading and writing and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at Tacoma Community College in Washington State.  She has also taught for the Washington Academy of Language's English Language Learner Intensive Daytime Summer Program for K-12 certified teachers as well as for the INTERLINK Language Center.  In addition to teaching in the United States, Sedia has studied, trained, and taught in Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania.  She is most influenced by participatory education, and her teaching practices are rooted in inclusion, engagement, and relevant content.  Above all, Sedia believes that both learning and teaching should be joyful.  She enjoys spending her time playing and discussing life with her beloved nine year old son.  

Suzan Kobashigawa

• PhD Indiana University of Pennsylvania
• MAT School for International Training

Suzan Kobashigawa is Professor in the School of Education at Northwest University. Suzan began her career teaching English in Japan and stayed for five years before beginning graduate school. She completed her MAT degree in TESOL through the School for International Training, Brattleboro, VT. Suzan completed her Ph.D. in Composition and TESOL at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. While there, she focused on language and culture, literacy, and language revitalization. At Northwest University, Suzan has directed the English language program, and is the Coordinator for the TESOL Certificate Program. She also teaches courses in Multicultural Education, Content Literacy/Secondary Methods, Research, Testing and Evaluation, and Phonetics. Currently, Suzan’s research interests are focused on qualitative inquiry (ethnography), language and culture, and literacy. In her spare time, Suzan has had a love-hate relationship with running, although she completes a half marathon annually, and she loves traveling, returning back to her family home in Hawai’i as often as she can.

Josh Kurzweil

• MAT, School for International Training
• Cambridge CELTA and DELTA.

Josh began his teaching career in 1990. He has taught and trained in Japan, Spain, the Republic of Georgia, and the United States. He received his Master's degree in teaching from the SIT Graduate Institute and also holds the Cambridge CELTA and DELTA. Josh has been involved in developing the curriculum for the SIT TESOL Certificate and is a trainer of trainers. In addition to working on the SIT course, Josh has been a trainer with the Peace Corps and does educational consulting through the company, Berkeley Learning Teaching Consultants, which he co-founded. He is the author of "Understanding Teaching Through Learning," which was published by McGraw-Hill in 2006, and his particular areas of interest include Experiential Learning, reflective practice, and lesson design. Josh lives with his wife and son in Berkeley, California.

Kim Lier

• MAT, School for International Training
• BA, University of Notre Dame

Kim’s experience in the field of education includes language teaching, program administration and teacher training.  In 1982 she went to Japan and spent three years teaching English to children, high school students and adults.  Upon returning to North America, Kim started teaching Japanese, initially at the junior and senior high school level in Indianapolis and later at two community colleges in North Vancouver, B.C.. These experiences generated so many questions about teaching and learning that she enrolled in the School for International Training (SIT) where she received a Master’s degree in teaching.  She stayed at SIT as a Project Manager for the next 10 years. During this time she returned to Japan to teach in and administer the final two years SIT’s Intensive English Program at Tokyo Jogakkan Junior College.  Most recently Kim has taught Japanese at Marlboro College, conducted training for public school teachers in Massachusetts, helped develop a teacher-training course for a major publisher and returned to administrative work at the Marlboro College Graduate school in the Nonprofit Management Program.  

Brian Long

• EdD, Columbia (candidate)
• MAT School for International Training
• BA History, University of Kansas

Brian Long is an international educational consultant, currently completing his doctorate at Teachers College Columbia University. He is interested in learning, how it happens, and how to set up learning-centered environments in formal classroom settings. Though now based in New York, Brian lived for fifteen years in Japan and Thailand, and his consulting work continues to take him around the world.  Convinced that rigor does not have to equal difficult or painful, Brian works with teachers and schools to adapt their practices toward a learning-centered, joy-centered approach to education. 

Patrick Moran

• PhD Lesley University
• MAT  School for International Training
• Professor Emeritus, SIT Graduate Institute

Pat Moran began his teaching career as a TEFL volunteer with the Peace Corps in Côte d’Ivoire.  He went on to teach EFL in the USA, Mexico, and Mali.  He taught French in Peace Corps training programs and to adults in the USA, including teachers of French. He has also taught introductory Spanish.

For over three decades he has worked in language teacher education, teaching courses in methodology, intercultural communication, Francophone culture, and second language acquisition, among others.  He supervised teachers of ESOL, French, and Spanish in a variety of schools in the U.S., Mexico,  as well as Mali, Puerto Rico, and Senegal.

His interests include development of reflective practitioners, practical solutions to teaching and learning culture in language classrooms, cooperation and collaboration in learning, self-directed language and culture learning,  applications of narrative to learning and teaching.

Janaki Natarajan

• EdD, MEd, Harvard University
• BA, Swarthmore College

Janaki is the director of the Spark Teacher Education Institute and program director for the MATS. She has been teaching for over seventeen years. She also directs Bapagrama Educational Center, based in Bangalore, India. This school has a long tradition of social service and community organizing. Named after Thakkar Bapa, a co-worker of Mahatma Gandhi, who believed in equality of all people and who was against the caste system, the school became a place for children from poor families to learn and grow.

Ariel Nelson

Ariel Nelson began teaching in 1992.  She has taught dance, theater, motorcycle mechanics, French, Spanish, and ESOL.  She has worked in private, public and technical schools, home-school settings and in international language schools in Peru and Senegal.   

In 2005, Ariel began training public and private school teachers on the best practices for teaching English Language Learners.  In 2008, she left the classroom to exclusively work as an educational consultant teaching licensure courses, professional development workshops, and providing instructional coaching in the classroom.  She has designed and implemented workshops for foreign language teachers, administrators, and mainstream and ESOL teachers, addressing the needs of struggling students and culturally and linguistically diverse students.   She has worked in Innovation Schools providing strategies and systems that will better serve the ELL community and their families.

Ariel is on the board at Hilltop Montessori School and is an active community member.  She enjoys traveling, gardening, dancing and spending time with her 11 year old son.

Mary Scholl

• MAT, School for International Training
• BA, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Mary Scholl lives in rural Costa Rica and is the founder of Centro Espiral Mana, a teacher training center, a community English program and a volunteer teacher placement program. With over 20 years of language teaching experience, Mary has been working with developing teachers for over 15 years. She is a graduate of the School for International Training and has lived and taught in both public and private settings on three continents and has worked with developing teachers in the U.S., Japan, Libya and most countries in Latin America. Mary is a frequent presenter at conferences in Latin Americ. Mary is deeply interested in creating joyful, compassionate, engaged and empowering learning opportunities and has presented on topics including leadership within the classroom, the role of creativity in language learning, the role of compassion in learning, reflective practice, observation and feedback, learning-centered language teaching and thinking skills and intuition.

Leslie Turpin

• PhD California Institute in Integral Studies
• MAT School for International Training

Leslie has taught in MA programs since 1980 including courses on pedagogy, culture, curriculum design, group dynamics, classroom-based research and reflective practice.

Her interests include identity in the language learner and teacher, revitalization of endangered languages, intercultural research methodology and the role of the arts and artists in education, cultural revitalization, intercultural dialogue and change. Her doctoral work on memory of place with a Laotian American community led to the revitalization of a Lao Opera Troupe, Sau Siang Pin and a touring intergenerational poetry project. She has also managed an internationally acclaimed puppet theater, Sandglass Theater, and is currently the US tour organizer for a singing ensemble from the Republic of Georgia, Zedashe.

She lives in Westminster West, Vermont on a small homestead with her husband.

 

 

If you have any questions, please come visit us, email or call Joe Heslin in admissions (888) 258-5665 x209