Paul: A brief history
I spent the early years of my childhood running around without shoes on the beaches of the Big Island in Hawaii. The majority of my memories from Hawaii involve food (mostly spam and rice), my uncles and aunties (used in the Hawaiian sense of the terms where literally everyone you meet would be called uncle and auntie), and hanging around my grandfather's auto shop where he and my father both worked as auto mechanics. It was tough growing up in paradise but I somehow managed it. I would later leave the islands and follow my family to such exotic places as Arizona, Alaska, Maryland, California, and Nevada.
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Watch me jump out of an airplane. |
I finally ended up in Idaho where I graduated from high school and then left for Idaho State University where I went to study journalism (ha!) and did one year there before leaving for Santiago, Chile as a missionary. I left without knowing any Spanish and came back thinking I knew more than I had really learned. However, I fell in love with the language and, as I took courses in language pedagogy, I soon decided that I wanted to go on to a teaching career.
I applied to the MA program at Brigham Young University where I was one of three individuals accepted that year into the language pedagogy track. My wife was in her last semester in the English literature program and so we lived apart for a few months as I started my program down in Provo, Utah. We were expecting our first child at the time and when she went in to labor I was sitting in my language assessment class trying to understand item analysis and how different kinds of questions could discriminate better than others. I drove three hours that night to make it to the hospital in Pocatello, Idaho only to wait another ten hours until the doctor finally performed an emergency c-section due to my wife's lack of progression. Ellie Alana was born that day, small, but healthy and after a few surreal days, I headed back down to Provo to continue my very interesting study of item analysis.
It was at BYU that I started to narrow my focus towards the field of language learning and technology. Upon completing my MA I was hired as a full-time instructor for The College of Idaho where I've been teaching Spanish language and culture and applied linguistics for the past five years. Shortly after starting my position here I began work on my doctorate in curriculum and instruction at nearby Boise State University.
During our time in Idaho our family grew from three to four and we now have one young lady (Ellie, 6) and one energetic toddler (Pemberly, 3). These past few years have been filled with adventures and travel as we've been able to visit Italy, China, and Spain. We've even been able to squeeze in a few trips back to Hawaii to visit cousins, friends, uncles, and aunties.
I applied to the MA program at Brigham Young University where I was one of three individuals accepted that year into the language pedagogy track. My wife was in her last semester in the English literature program and so we lived apart for a few months as I started my program down in Provo, Utah. We were expecting our first child at the time and when she went in to labor I was sitting in my language assessment class trying to understand item analysis and how different kinds of questions could discriminate better than others. I drove three hours that night to make it to the hospital in Pocatello, Idaho only to wait another ten hours until the doctor finally performed an emergency c-section due to my wife's lack of progression. Ellie Alana was born that day, small, but healthy and after a few surreal days, I headed back down to Provo to continue my very interesting study of item analysis.
It was at BYU that I started to narrow my focus towards the field of language learning and technology. Upon completing my MA I was hired as a full-time instructor for The College of Idaho where I've been teaching Spanish language and culture and applied linguistics for the past five years. Shortly after starting my position here I began work on my doctorate in curriculum and instruction at nearby Boise State University.
During our time in Idaho our family grew from three to four and we now have one young lady (Ellie, 6) and one energetic toddler (Pemberly, 3). These past few years have been filled with adventures and travel as we've been able to visit Italy, China, and Spain. We've even been able to squeeze in a few trips back to Hawaii to visit cousins, friends, uncles, and aunties.