News
Joan was selected by the American Association of Colleges and Universities for the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award. This award "recognizes graduate students who are committed to developing academic and civic responsibility in themselves and others, and who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education." Joan was one of 8 to be selected out of more than 250 nominees. She will receive her award at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities January 25-28. This is indeed an honor for LLC, ESOL, and all of UMBC. If you wish to convey personal congratulations, please contact Joan at: jshin2@umbc.edu.
The LLC program was well-represented at the 40th Annual TESOL Convention in Tampa March 15th to 18th. Faida Abu-Ghazelah (cohort 5) presented on “An Anthropological Perspective on Palestinian Identity in Diaspora;” George M. Chinnery (cohort 8) on “Internet Technologies for the Listening and Speaking Class” and “Integrated Skills Development Using Instant Messenger;” Asli Hassan (cohort 6) on “Helping the Refugee Family in Small-City America;” and Steve Shin (graduate of cohort 3) on “Korean Adolescents' Ethnic Identity and Language Practices.”
Others participated in collaborative presentations. Silvio Avendaño (graduate of cohort 2) co-presented on “Collaboration in a Web-based course for EFL Program Administrators;” Joan Kang Shin (cohort 6) on “Building Learning Communities for TEYL Professionals,” Silvio, Joan, Bev Bickel (graduate of cohort 3), and Jodi Crandall on “Teacher Educators as New Comers in the Online Educational Environment” and “Creating Spaces for Collaboration through the Internet;” and Jodi on “Promising Practices in Community College Adult ESL” and “Raising the Status of the ESL Profession.”
Joan has also had a proposal accepted for a poster session at the CALICO (Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium) to be held on May 20 at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. The title of her presentation is: Building an Effective International Community of Inquiry for EFL Professionals through Computer-Mediated Communication.”
Joan had the lead article in the Volume 44, No. 2 of the English Teaching Forum. The issue is focused on teaching English to young learners. Joan's article is "Ten Helpful Hints for Teaching English to Young Learners."
Joan's colloquium entitled, "Building Learning Communities for TEYL Professionals," was accepted for presentation at the 40th Annual TESOL Convention in Tampa, Florida, March 15-18, 2006 with co-presenters. Dr. Rana Yildirim from Turkey and Shefali Ray from India. Rana and Shefali were formerly Joan's students in her online distance teacher education course, "Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL)."
Joan was invited to Saudi Arabia as an English Language Specialist by the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education and the US Department of State
with a team of 6 male and female trainers from both the US Department of State and the British Council. From August 15 - September 1, 2005, Joan conducted two five-day training sessions in Dammam and Jeddah to 175 female English teacher supervisors on teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and EFL teacher supervision.
Her workshop titles included: Collaborative Teacher Evaluations, Thematic Unit Planning, Techniques for Increasing Classroom Interaction, Learning and Teaching Styles for Primary Students, and Using the Internet to Enhance You EFL Lessons: WebQuests.
Joan's article, "Teaching English to Young Learners: An Online Teacher Training Course," was published in the Spring 2005 issue of the Learning Languages, The Journal of the National Network for Early Language Learning.
Her article describes the online distance teacher education course that she developed and taught to teachers, administrators, and Ministry of Education officials from countries in Northern Africa, the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia. Joan's course is one of five courses offered by the US Department of State's E-Teacher Program and is taught through the English Language Center at UMBC.
Joan took part in University of Michigan's EEE (Essential English Examination) Symposium as an Academic Specialist in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 19-21. The 4 Academic Specialists and 10 Master Teachers from different countries around the world lent their expertise in Teaching English to Young Learners to help University of Michigan's Testing Division create a new English proficiency examination for young EFL learners.
Joan and LLC graduate, Dr. Silvio Avendano and Dr. Susan Blunck, a faculty member in the UMBC Education Department, presented at the "Voice and Vision in Language Teacher Education: Fourth International Conference" sponsored by the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota, June 2-4, 2005. Their presentation was entitled, "EFL Teachers in an Online Educational Environment: A Qualitative Study."
Joan presented a colloquium entitled, "Online Creation of Public Pedgogical Spaces," at the 39th Annual TESOL Convention in San Antonio, Texas on April 2, 2005 with fellow LLC students Dr. Silvio Avendano (Cohort 2), Dr. Beverly Bickel (Cohort 3), Dr. David Truscello (Cohort 1), and Adriana Val (Cohort 8).
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Profile
Joan, a native Baltimorean of Korean ethnicity, received a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University in 1993 after which she gained her first taste of cross-cultural experience working for a Korean trading company in New York City. Her interest in cross-cultural communication continued and her love for teaching was ignited through her experience as an ESL teaching assistant in Howard County and as a volunteer ESL teacher for Hispanic adults a few years later. After these challenging yet rewarding experiences teaching, Joan went back to school and received an M.A. from UMBC in Instructional Systems Development (ESOL/Bilingual track) in 1999 while working as a teaching assistant at University of Maryland English Institute at UMCP.
Upon graduating from UMBC, Joan went back to her parents’ native country, Korea, and worked as an ESL teacher for one year at Seoul Foreign School. The next year Joan remained in Korea and connected with her UMBC roots by accepting a teaching position at Sookmyung Women’s University TESOL Program (SMU-TESOL), where she worked under the direction of JoAnn Crandall (LLC Program Director) and Ronald Schwartz (Co-director, ESOL/Bilingual Program). Committed to training Korean EFL teachers and building a successful cross-cultural community of learning, Joan spent four years at SMU-TESOL serving as a Methodology and Intercultural Communication instructor as well as the Course Coordinator of their graduate level TESOL certification program for her last two years.
Joan’s five-year stay in Korea as well as her experience traveling to many different countries in Asia and Europe built her awareness of the emergence of English as a powerful tool for economic and social advancement around the world. Her interest in the growth of English as an international language and the cultural implications of this phenomenon led her to seek further opportunities to study the interplay between language and culture in the LLC Program. Now back in the U.S., Joan hopes to reacquaint herself with the American side of her identity and search for ways, through the LLC Program, to create effective instructional systems, in the classroom as well as in community settings, both here and abroad for the promotion of intercultural sensitivity and understanding.
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