Today’s Student spotlight features current LTS student Ezdahi Lopez-Pineda

– blog post by Inês Bernardo Catarino, FLTA-LTS

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background!

I like to play video games, lots of simulation games like Supermarket simulator where I get to run my own supermarket! I am quite introverted despite pursuing a career that involves me speaking in front of groups of people. I’ve been interested in language since I could remember. I have a cat named Nala that I love a lot! I like to take pictures of flowers on walks I take.

What brought you to language teaching? And to the UO?

Spanish is my first language, and I was enrolled in Spanish immersion classes where I was learning content in Spanish until 4^th grade when I began to be placed in English content courses. This caused me to struggle with English for a while I was put in ELD (English Language Development) classes up until high school. I was pulled out of classes as well to get additional tutoring for English. 

Growing up in these circumstances, I felt like something was wrong with me and I always felt behind in both my English proficiency and my abilities in the content being learned in my other classes.

Because of this, I wanted to help students in similar situations not feel the same way but try to find ways to make both work together – how to improve their English while not falling behind in content. Additionally, I want to be a mentor to students, one where I could be a reliable adult figure in their life because this is something I felt I didn’t have in education.

What have some of your past experiences been with language teaching? Do you have any specifically fond memories?

I don’t have much experience yet in language teaching itself, but I do have a lot of experience leading non-academic classrooms of younger students. I’ve found a lot of joy in being a mentor figure for youth. I feel I am making an impact in their lives while teaching them non-academic life lessons. 

I have a very fond memory with a specific young person. She would commonly get yelled at for what is considered throwing a tantrum and ‘not listening’. I didn’t like this approach by other workers so I would approach her by just allowing her to express herself in whichever way she felt she needed to do. After it all, I’d either try to divert her thoughts to another topic or just really let her express herself and why she felt she needed to do that. This in turn resulted in her coming to me whenever she felt upset or had any intense emotion. This was really rewarding for me because she trusted me.

The few language teaching experiences I do have to do with the Talking with Ducks course (the practicum course). I was able to facilitate lesson plans and build relationships with the students while having so much fun not only with the students but also with my peer teachers.

What has been the highlight of your time in the program so far?

I think the highlight of my time in the program so far was seeing the results of what I’ve learned. Being able to apply what I’ve learned to many different situations beyond language teaching has felt really nice. Additionally, creating friendships and growing it with the peer teachers has been great.

How do you hope to work in the language teaching field in the future?

I hope to work in any of K-12 environment whether its academic or non-academic where I could teach English as a second language. 

What is something outside of language teaching that you are passionate about? A fun fact about yourself that others may not know?

Before language or linguistics, I was a computer science major at OSU (I know, embarrassing). However, I like to work on personal web development projects or any simple game development projects for fun.