The New York Times 2011 ESOL Teacher of the Year Award

WINNER

Paula Da Silva-Michelin was born and raised in Campinas, a college city in the suburbs of São Paulo, Brazil.  In 1989, Ms. Da Silva-Michelin graduated with a major in American Literature from Pontificia Catholic University, in Campinas. Soon after her graduation, she moved to New York with a great desire to succeed and pursue her dreams of becoming an English as a Second Language teacher. In 1997, she got her TESOL certificate from The New School and soon after she started working as a volunteer at the International Center of New York. In 2003, she started to teach ESL to adults at the Center for Immigrant Education and Training at LaGuardia Community College. During her tenure at CIET, she has participated in numerous professional development activities, including Designed for Learning, a year-long intensive program available only to a select group of faculty. Through this program Ms. Da Silva-Michelin integrated technology into her class in a fun and unusual way when she asked students to write letters to President Obama and later on turned the letters into digital stories. Additionally, in 2009 she received a grant to write lesson sets for We Are New York, an Emmy-Award winning series of ESL videos created by the Mayor’s Office of Adult Education and CUNY’s Office of Academic Affairs, which are currently being distributed and shared by teachers across the city (www.nyc.gov/learnenglish ). Currently, Ms. Da Silva-Michelin is pursuing a Master’s degree in TESOL at City College. In addition, Ms. Da Silva-Michelin works with young children and parents at Queens Library where she helps them to develop the skills necessary for the pre-school environment. Ms. Da Silva-Michelin thinks that what brings the most pleasure in teaching is the realization that you can make a difference in your students’ lives when teaching is used as tool to reach out to students and their needs. With that in mind, Ms. Da Silva- Michelin has brought to her students Financial, Health and Domestic Violence workshops.  She believes humans are incredibly adaptable creatures who can overcome any barriers that they set their minds to. As Paulo Freire once wrote “We must dare to learn how to dare in order to say no to the bureaucratization of the mind to which we are exposed every day. We must dare so that we can continue to do so even when it is so much more materially advantageous to stop daring”.

HONOREES

Elaine Soffer entered the field of ESL through the world of adult literacy.  She was a literacy volunteer for the Queens Public Library  while she worked in administrative jobs at New York City government agencies.  At some point, she realized she enjoyed tutoring more than her day job, and went back to school to get a master’s in TESOL at Queens College.  She received her degree in 1994.  Ms. Soffer has never regretted her decision to switch careers.   Although she worked for a number of years at Queensborough Community College, she has spent the bulk of her teaching career in different ESL programs at Nassau Community College, most recently in the LINCC program (Language Immersion at Nassau Community College).   For the past three and a half years, she served as a co-coordinator of the program while she continued to teach.  This semester, she returned to being “just” a teacher, the job she loves the most.  She enjoys every part of teaching, from the preparation of materials, to the organizing of plans, to the execution of the lessons.  She is thrilled to work in a full-time integrated skills, holistic program, and she is privileged to work with an incredibly diverse and motivated student body.  She lives in Queens with her husband and two daughters.

Robin Winters started teaching her siblings, nieces and nephews at a very early age. She says that it is a gift to help others excel. In September 1999, she began her teaching career at Public School C.S. 55 in the Bronx, across the street from where she spent her teenage years enabling her to give back to her community. She taught in public schools until 2007 when she began working for Groundwork for Success, a nonprofit college preparation program for high school students. At GWS, Ms. Winters taught English and coordinated a Saturday Academy. In September 2009 she visited the Harlem Y - New American Welcome Center to inquire about the classes she'd seen through its windows and quickly became a volunteer ESOL instructor. Within a month she was employed as a part-time Literacy and ESOL instructor for adults. She realized that teaching is teaching and grade level doesn't matter. Ms. Winters says that teaching is her gift from God and that she is here to serve her purpose.

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