I have been involved in either teaching, learning or both all my professional life. As well as teaching in the English state sector (both a middle school and secondary levels), I have extensive experience in the field of English as a foreign language (16 years experience) and that of autonomous (self-directed) learning (12 years experience). Being a passionate believer in continuous professional development, I obtained a postgraduate certificate in applied linguistics and a postgraduate diploma in artificial intelligence.
My most recent experiences, which I believe strongly support my application for this Return to Teaching course, have been in the area of self-directed learning. I happened to be in the training department of Saudi Aramco , the largest integrated oil company in the world, at a time that an urgent need was identified to move employees (approximately 160,000) from complete dependence on 'spoon fed' instructor-led courses to a situation where self-directed learning was an attractive alternative. In 1997 I moved from the classroom to the Corporate Learning Centers group where I became quite well-known throughout the company as an internal learning consultant. I led the setting up of 35 learning centers (the American spelling is due to the company history) all over the Arabian peninsula. After rising to become the group leader of Corporate Learning Centers, I transferred to the unit responsible for promoting e-learning over the corporate internet where I continued as an internal learning consultant, working with other human resource development professionals in other business lines to enable them to offer self-directed learning opportunities to their employees. A significant part of my responsibilities was developing contracts between the company and e-learning content providers. Naturally this experience of promoting autonomous learning has led to the development of several important skills which I hope to utilize in my return to teaching. I believe that now is the right time to return to teaching because I feel that I still have a great deal to contribute to education and the development of young learners in this country. My energy levels are high and I am confident that I will perform well in any classroom situation that I might be in.
The main areas of development that I hope to achieve through completing the course are to gain an enhanced understanding of the National Curriculum, the latest thinking on behaviour and classroom management and how linguistics is and can be used to improve learning outcomes in modern foreign languages and remedial reading.
Initially I hope to be able to hit the ground running as a classroom teacher, but have ambitions to develop published materials using my knowledge and expertise of linguistics and the development of computer applications. I am equally at home with youngsters and mature students because the desire to learn is a universal human trait.