Meeting needs
11/20/2024
After graduating in May, Mara Ruhlen is hopes to earn a Master of Arts in TESOL and Applied Linguistics
Gaining experience through TESOL practicum
Mara Ruhlen ’25, an English education major, pursuing an Adolescent/Young Adult teaching licensure and a TESOL minor, from Dunkirk, Ohio, has gained classroom experience teaching English this semester at Lima City Schools.
Inspired by her high school English teachers, Ruhlen decided she wanted to teach English someday as well. After taking a required TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course, she fell in love with TESOL and decided to add it as a minor.
“I really enjoy TESOL because you get to work with smaller groups of students, which allows you to build close relationships with the students,” said Ruhlen. “Seeing the student’s progress and how much they care about learning English is really special to me.”
Ruhlen gained experience in the classroom during the fall 2024 semester by completing a practicum for her TESOL minor. Each week, she worked with ESL (English as a Second Language) students at three different Lima City Schools. While they worked on language skills such as sight words and vowel sounds, the main goal was helping the student become more comfortable speaking to others.
“Being able to teach lessons in a classroom with students and apply the theories and methods I have learned in my own classes was really helpful,” said Ruhlen.
Ruhlen says TESOL is a growing field and she is excited to make a difference in this field. The number of students in schools who need to learn English is on the rise, while the number of teachers who can each these students English is decreasing, which Ruhlen was able to see first hand during her time at Lima City.
In addition to her experience at Lima City, Ruhlen and two of her classmates were able to teach English to a woman who moved to Bluffton and only spoke Swahili.
“It was so cool to see how quickly we were able to teach her different words,” said Ruhlen. “We would show her everyday items and keep repeating the words to her until she was able to say the words for herself.”
On campus, Ruhlen has been a student worker in the writing center. Ruhlen said having this on campus job has helped her feel prepared to become a teacher as she has been able to read a variety of papers and give constructive feedback to her peers.
Ruhlen will student teach during the spring semester. After graduating in May, Ruhlen would like to attend University of Findlay and earn her Master of Arts in TESOL and Applied Linguistics.