A Bridge to English - Vicky Allen

I had 25+ years teaching the deaf in the United States before switching to English as a Second/Foreign Language. With this new field, I was given the opportunity to teach at the college level in the United Arab Emirates. This is when I began to connect what I knew from teaching the deaf with what I needed to do to help my students with their English language learning. In addition, I have taught college-level ASL for foreign language credit, developed a course, ASL for Teachers, for graduate credit at the University of Nevada and presented multiple sessions, ASL in the ESL Classroom, in several different countries and a 5-week workshop, ASL in the ESL Classroom, for teacher development in the UAE.

Our brains work best when we connect something new to something already learned. I try to use any method that actually helps me to achieve this goal.

1998 - Teacher of the Year, Florida School for the Deaf and Blind 2013 - Quality Award for Innovative Teaching - Higher College of Technology, United Arab Emirates 2015 - Quality Award for Innovative Teaching - Higher College of Technology, United Arab Emirates

Bachelor's degree in Linguistics from UC Riverside, California; Master's degree in Deaf Education from Lewis & Clark College, Oregon; TESOL certification (120 hours) from Anaheim University, California

I love traveling, learning about new cultures, and meeting locals all over the world. Before returning to the United States, I was living in Ecuador in a small town high up in the Andes mountains, where the air is clean and the people are friendly! I've had the good fortune to still be teaching some of my students from Ecuador through Zoom. We helped each other survive the roughest part of the pandemic, and are still going strong!