Meet Our NY Teachers

Julia Popescu

The most effective way to teach English to students, says Julia Popiescu, is to help them forget about their emotional barriers to learning.

"A big problem with second language acquisition is anxiety," Julia says. "Students get so focused on the grammar that they get nervous and can't speak, so I have to provide an exercise that eases their tension and gets them to practice their grammar without concentrating on it too much."

That's why the sound of laughter can often be heard coming out of her classroom at Rennert in New York City.

Students were literally falling out of their chairs with laughter recently when Julia asked them all to write down a personal secret that they were ultimately willing to divulge to their class. Class participants each picked a secret randomly, then guessed which one of their classmates was keeping it. It turned out that one student had once stepped on her roommate's lizard. Another had donned a wig to follow a two-timing boyfriend. The exchange among the students was hilarious.

"Laughter is so important in ESL classrooms, because people will lose their inhibitions and speak freely," Julia says.

Julia, who holds a degree in English from Marymount Manhattan College and a certificate from Columbia University's intensive Post baccalaureate TESOL Program, has taught at Rennert for two and a half years. She is a native of Washington, D.C.

She was drawn on a very deep level to her career as a teacher. "I have a natural curiosity about other cultures and other people," she says. "I was looking for something to do in New York that was more than a job and this seemed like the natural path to me." She adds, "I'm not a nine-to-fiver. I don't like jobs where you are doing the same things every day, and here, every day is different."

Julia has taught Level 7 English at Rennert for two and a half years. "When you put people from all the different corners of the world in the same room you kind of build your own little universe," she says. "And because not everyone shares the same mother tongue, you end up relying on other communicative pathways. We form our own private jokes that don't make sense outside of the classroom. It's just a really interactive environment when you are in a classroom with ESL students."

Julia likes working with her students. "Adult ESL students are just the best kind of students," she says. "They want to be here so much. I learn from them as much as they learn from me. They challenge me as much as I try to challenge them."