Anny+Ewing+Bio

Anny Ewing
 I am a PreK-Adult Story-Based Language Teacher and Teacher Trainer.

I've wandered a bit in my career as an educator, having gone to graduate school in Linguistics in the early 80s, when I also was an instructor in college-level French and Linguistics at Penn; then taught high school French and Spanish at [|Westtown School], and at [|Swiss Semester in Zermatt] in the mid 80s; followed by a brief stint in shoe biz (working for an importer with shoe factories in Mexico and China), and in college counseling at the [|Shipley School]; then 14 years developing multimedia materials for foreign language educators and textbook publishers with the Project for International Communication Studies (PICS) at the University of Iowa, and on my own as Altamira Educational Solutions.

I returned to the classroom at the "just right" level when I started an after-school FLES program at my sons' elementary school in 2000, then returned to Westtown in 2002 to teach Lower School Spanish. Even before discovering [|TPRS] and Teaching with Comprehensible Input (TCI) I developed my curriculum around stories, many of which focused on our Lower School garden where Spanish students plant, tend, harvest and prepare food, from //calabazas// in Kindergarten through //salsa cruda// in 5th grade.

A one-day workshop led by [|Carol Gaab] introduced me to TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) in spring of 2007. This fun, creative, input-focused, comprehension-based philosophy of teaching has helped me understand learning in a whole new light. It touches not only my language teaching, but my way of being in the classroom and interacting with students throughout the school day. Because it allows all learners to engage fully and find success acquiring language, TPRS/TCI is by far the most exciting, creative, and effective way I've ever taught, at any level. After one intensive Arabic class; several more workshops, including lessons in Mandarin, Swedish, and Russian; and annual attendance at national and international TPRS/TCI conferences, I am more convinced than ever.

Westtown granted me a sabbatical in spring of 2011 to visit schools where comprehensible input is at the heart of language teaching, and where language learning is an integral part of K-12 education for a connected world. I visited 20+ schools in CT, VT, CA, CO, PA, OH, and MI; met 50+ language teachers, ranging from a first-year AmeriCorps teacher to 40-year veterans; many with their own well-appointed classrooms, others racing 'Español on a Roll' carts down halls and up elevators. I sat in on language classes in French, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish; in inner-city, small-town and suburban schools; public, independent, and religious schools; day and boarding; high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, and PK-12 schools; with class sizes ranging from 10 to 40+ students; and observed language taught at levels Pre-K through AP.

Immediately upon returning from sabbatical, in August of 2011, I organized a workshop to introduce area teachers to TPRS. Since then, I have since been trained to coach CI teachers at major conferences and regional workshops. In spring of 2013, I joined forces with three other dedicated TCI teachers in the TriState area (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware), to organize a peer learning network—[|TriState TCI]— that mee ts monthly and posts regu larly on FaceBook to provide support and share ideas among the region's growing ranks of CI teachers. As our group has grown, we’ve shared our ideas through workshops in our own schools as well as presentations at state, national, and international language teachers' conferences. Last winter I attended a licensing course in the Netherlands, at TPRS Academy, to learn how they train teachers in CI methods. Our next local endeavor is to adapt their year-long course to train, launch, and support new CI teachers in the TriState area.

Follow our progress at my occasional blog [|Profe Anny cuenta] and on our [|TriState TCI FaceBook page].

I live on a small farm in Chester County, PA, with my husband, [|Larry McCauley]. We are visited frequently by our two grown sons, Sam and Henry. When we're not working at our respective schools and jobs, we raise llamas and chickens, have a sizable vegetable garden, and variously enjoy hiking, travel, scuba diving, skiing, Mario Karts, reading, soccer, surfing, lacrosse, and rugby.