SELS

Mona Khabiri

Mona Khabiri has a PhD in TESL/TEFL from Azad University, Iran. She teaches college reading and writing, advanced reading and composition, and grammar for reading and writing at Las Positas College and Diablo Valley College. Before moving to California in 2017, she was an associate professor of TESL at Azad University in Iran for 18 years where she taught ESL courses, as well as teacher education courses to graduate students, supervised master’s and PhD theses, and directed the publication of Journal of English Language Studies. She was selected as the best...

Candace Khanna

Candace Khanna graduated with a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley, worked in a variety of non-teaching jobs that included business writing and editing, and then returned to college at San Francisco State University, graduating with a M.A. in TESOL and a Certificate in Teaching Composition. Since then, she’s enjoyed teaching all levels of ESL and composition in several Bay Area programs, primarily at Laney College in Oakland and The Summer English Language Studies program in the summers. A California native, she’s also had a long connection with India, traveled and worked there, and...

Rachel Kotok

Rachel Kotok has taught English language, literature, and literacy for the past sixteen years. She earned an M.A. in TESOL and ESL Public School K-12 Licensure at the School for International Training, and a B.A. in World Religion from Smith College. She currently teaches Business English online to European clients and works as an editor in K-12 ESL publishing. She has taught English and EFL/ESL to university students at various Bay Area colleges and in Perú, newcomer elementary and middle public school learners in Boston, and refugee adults in Maine and San Francisco. Rachel has...

Amy Joy Lashmet

Amy Joy graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Spanish Linguistics and a minor in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). She then earned her master's degree in TESOL from Columbia University in New York City. While in New York, she taught adult English language learners from over 50 countries, allowing her to work with students from a wide variety of language backgrounds and levels of English proficiency. Returning to her alma mater, she now teaches academic English to international...

Lawrence Metzger

Larry Metzger recently completed two years of teaching pre-Master’s students academic writing and communications at Nazarbayev University. He taught for 8 years in Middle Eastern national universities within Oman, UAE and Qatar developing problem-based course materials which integrated conflict resolution, critical thinking and research methodology. While there, he wrote a US State Department grant for Qatar University and authored a chapter on conflict resolution and personality dynamics for TESOL Arabia’s ELT management handbook. Larry also taught in Japan for 8 years at different...

Shalle Leeming

Shalle Leeming has more than twenty years of experience teaching and developing curriculum for English language learners, most recently in the art and design context of California College of the Arts, where she is Assistant Professor of Writing and Literature. She has also taught English and writing at other universities in the Bay Area and abroad, including Stanford University, Koç University in Turkey, and Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. She holds an MA in English (TESOL) from San Francisco State University and BA in Radio/Television/Film, Minor in Art, from San José State...

Paula Leao Madsen

Paula Leao Madsen, MA in Applied Linguistics, is currently writing her PhD thesis (also in Applied Linguistics). She has taught a range of college-level courses over the past 14 years, including English as a Second Language and English as a Foreign Language (from basic to advanced levels), English Literature, English Pronunciation, Didactics, Literacy, Reading, Writing, and English for Specific Purposes. Paula helped develop and implement a Bachelor of Education Program in English and Portuguese at a state university in Brazil and was the program’s first coordinator. She is...

Ron Martinez

Ron Martinez holds a PhD in English from the University of Nottingham and an MSc in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition from the University of Oxford, with over 25 years of experience in the language teaching profession. He currently leads a number of initiatives related to the internationalization of higher education in Brazil, in particular at the Universidade Federal do Paraná (Curitiba), where he is advisor on international education policy, as well as director of Brazil’s first academic writing center, which he founded. He is especially interested in English for...

Barbara (Bobbie) McClain

Barbara (Bobbie) McClain, M.A. Teaching, has taught Rhetoric and Writing at San Diego State University and ESL/EFL in California, Japan, and Vietnam. She is an award winning writer (Family Guide to the Exhibition, San Francisco Asian Art Museum, “Splendors of Imperial China”), and has written numerous articles and features for the San Francisco Chronicle Newspapers in Education program. She was a founding member of The New York Times College Program.

John McClain

John McClain, BA in Philosophy (UC Berkeley) and MA in Comparative Literature (SFSU), has taught TESOL and English (composition, reading, and literature) since the mid-1980’s. He lived and taught in Japan for eight and a half years. In California, he has been a teacher at Cañada College, in downtown San Francisco, and at Imperial Valley College. He currently teaches at College of the Desert. Long active in publishing and teachers’ professional organizations, Mr. McClain chaired a regional ESL conference for CATESOL, and he has presented on techniques in grammar instruction statewide...