1. She majored in English Education at Ohio University
At first, she had planned to teach the language arts to high-or-middle schoolers in grades 7 through 12. “Language arts” encompasses English literature, drama, and journalism.
2. She is from Ohio but came to MSU specifically to learn how to teach literacy and language.
Farrar is from Ohio but came to MSU for her Master’s degree. After graduating from university, she worked at the Literacy Coalition. This job meant she did a lot of work with adults, refugees, immigrants and also people who were working to earn their General Educational Development (the GED; it’s for folks who quit attending high school but want to show they are just as qualified as those who earned diplomas). She got the idea to come to MSU from one of the people she worked for at the Coalition:
“I was working for a woman who was well-known in literacy. She used to be a professor at MSU, and after talking to her, I decided to get a Master’s. The program was called at the time “literacy and language instruction.” They changed it while I was going, so my degree just says literacy.”
3. She didn’t always want to be a teacher.
“Other people told me when I was growing up that I should be a teacher. When I would play with kids in the neighborhood, my mom was always like, ‘you always had to be the teacher.’ So that should be an indication. But I always thought I didn’t want to be a teacher because I didn’t want to deal with kids and stuff. “
She says she’s also interested in linguistics and would like to learn more languages.
4. She adapts her teaching techniques to suit her students.
“People from a lot of different countries, their educational systems are so different, and that really affects the students. So if you have students from several different countries in one class like I do sometimes, some people are great students and they have high-level education in their country and it’s easier for them. But some people had no schooling. Some places in the world, people just don’t have the same access to education and they are just so far behind that they don’t even know how to be a student. So that’s difficult in one classroom.
“What helps with that is that I assign a lot of group work, and try as a language teacher to do a little bit of something that’s listening-based, speaking-based, writing-based and reading-based. For example, people who have no formal education might speak really well but they can’t read very well. In other cultures, people are not so open with their speaking, but they can read and know grammar really well. Working in a group, the students complement each other. I try to get students to use all of those skills so that different people can shine and also learn from each other.
“I try to make the class comfortable with each other. And mix them up so that they have to speak English. Students can speak in groups and pairs first and then do a presentation so that they have time to prepare.”
5. She has been with VIPP since 2012.
“A friend of mine had gone to graduate school with somebody who worked at VIPP at that time and said they were looking for someone to teach in the summer. My friend told me about it because she knew I was looking for something to do in the summer. I started with Conversation. “
6. She believes language study at VIPP will help you to build relationships.
She said she hoped students “know English can be fun to learn, and that you can use it to develop relationships with people.”
She went on to say that the study of language goes beyond the theoretical when you are learning that language in another country.
“When you are studying another language in another country, you can use the language to have friends and real discussions about things.”
7. VIPP helped Jessica find a program in China to attend herself.
“I went to Sichuan, Chengdu. They had this huge international summer program that I found out through VIPP. I worked with a faculty group a couple of summers ago and they told me they had a program for international faculty. And almost all the faculty members from 2 years ago were they throwing me a welcome party and that was really nice of them to all get together and do this for me. They had a slide show of their time at MSU. And the program itself is really cool too because they brought in professors from all over the world. They had this huge opening program and a lot of the people were from MSU and they sang the MSU Fight song in this huge auditorium. Everything was professionally done–and all of a sudden they were like, “we are going to do the MSU Fight Song!” American and Chinese students were all singing it together. I was back there sing by myself!
In all, Jessica has visited China three times and says she enjoyed but she also hopes for the opportunity to travel to other countries.
8. She hopes more American students will study abroad.
Jessica points out that the high cost of study abroad is one factor why American students don’t study abroad more.
“But it still indicates that people are not valuing the experience that much because if it is important, you would find a way to make it cheaper.
Language is another factor because not many Americans speak a second language.
“Maybe there’s a need to value learning other languages, because when you learn another language, you learn different ways to think about things. I think a lot of young people do value that. There’s a Chinese Immersion School, where American kids are taught Chinese and there are classes for adults, too. And that’s such a cool idea and good skill to have.”
VIPP at MSU Blog 