This is where we will post our self-introductions. I will go first. 

Please call me Steve.  I teach at a university in Japan where I have lived for the last 14 years.  I was in the first on-site certificate class at the New School oh so many years ago and that gave me a great foundation to pursue a career in ESL/EFL teaching. Since then I have gone on to get an MAT in teaching English from the School for International Training and an Ed.D. from Temple University in curriculum and instructional technology.  I have taught in NYC, Ecuador, China, and Japan and have done teacher training in Japan, Thailand, and Bangladesh.  I have worked with kids (very challenging for me), high school students and adults in community language programs, business English programs, and university/college.

I always thought I was a lousy language learner (two years of high school Spanish supported that feeling), but I decided in the late 80s to stop being monolingual and so enrolled in Berlitz to study Spanish…since then I have studied several languages (dabbled is a better term) but can only speak Japanese (my Spanish has declined and so I want to brush up on it).

I want to make this course and the subject accessible to all of you and I want you to leave the course knowing how to analyze a grammar point and how to put a grammar lesson together.

I worry about the change from the old New School online system to Blackboard.  I think Blackboard should be a great system, but worry about the learning curve I have to (and you by default) go through.

Any questions, please do not hesitate to email me.  I will post more on how I see our class running in the next day or two.

Also, please respond to other's posts by making a comment or asking a question (of course, you don't have to do it if you have nothing to say, but these follow-up comments are what makes our course feel like a real course!