Meet Our NY Teachers

Thomas Julian

Thomas Julian teaches Level 6 in Rennert Bilingual's English as a Second Language (ESL) program. Level 6 at Rennert is a significant point in the learning experience for ESL students. They have mastered most of the fundamentals of the language and are ready to move on to refining their English vocabulary and pronunciation skills and deepening their understanding of the language.

This calls for an instructor to be a good listener and observer. "At Level 6 we have to be communicative in class and the students have to spend the majority of their time speaking," Thomas says. "I make a major effort not to speak. They spend most of the time speaking because they are at the point where everything is just going to be correction and getting deeper into ideas. They pretty much know everything: they just have to get into it deeper."

Most of the time, Thomas will split his class into pairs and small multicultural groups. "That's really the key: they're always talking in little groups and I listen to them." Often he will correct students on the spot but he also listens for repeated errors - mistakes the whole class can benefit from looking at.

Thomas graduated from the City College of New York baccalaureate program with a mixed major in sociology and journalism. He started his career doing multimedia events at fashion and trade shows. His teaching career started when he moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and started teaching ESL. Realizing how much he liked it, he completed his CELTA certification while living and teaching in Budapest, Hungary.

One of the reasons Thomas was drawn to the profession was his interest in international culture and people. "I love interaction with students, helping people get new ideas and learning things, and I love getting view-points and opinions from other people from other countries," he says. "That's why teaching in New York is so great: we have poly- cultural classes. There will be five people from five countries and everybody will talk versus five people from one country where one person explains everything and that's pretty much the end of the discussion."

His students are always surprised, he says, that he knows as much as he does about their cultures. "Students always think it's really funny, like the Koreans and the Japanese have a lot of interesting things about their cultures like birthday systems or superstitions or whatever, which I always have them explain to the rest of the class," Thomas says.

Thomas also likes introducing his students to New York City. "I love being able to go out with people in New York and have them feel fresh excitement for parts of the city which we can find stale because we've been here," he says. "It's nice to see them excited because we're walking down Broadway. I like the fact that Rennert encourages Friday class excursions."

In fact, Thomas is one of those lucky people who made the perfect career choice. He feels good about what he is doing. "I love my job," he says. "It is a lot of fun."