Alumni, Students Celebrate 50 Years of TESOL Master's Program

GOLDEN GATE XPRESS -- “I feel very lucky that I’ve gotten to meet so many different kinds of people from all over the world and I had just wonderful teachers,” said Bali Kathleen Nelson, a 1997 graduate. “It really gave me great training in developing materials and everything I needed to go out there and make a good life as an ESL teacher.” Nelson said she used the skills from TESOL to teach English language courses to Roman Catholic nuns at the Monastery of Perpetual Adoration in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, which led to a book and short film. “With this program you get a really good theoretical basis and framework for teaching but then you also get a lot of opportunities to practice teaching, to volunteer to be a teacher and that to me is really important,” graduate student Lina Jurkunas said. “Also, the tradition of this program is incredible. We’re celebrating 50 years today and that’s a very special moment.”