Interns At Large!

As part of our Winter Newsletter, we've put together profiles of our English At Large interns. Find out more about them here!

Every year, the English At Large staff is helped out by a group of student interns from different schools and universities in the Boston area. This year, our group consists of Molly, Kaleigh, Matty, Kris, and Tatyana. Here's a little information to help you get to know the interns!

• Kristofer Pieper (Kris) is a sophomore at Tufts University from Saratoga Springs, NY, and is double majoring in Psychology and Environmental Science. As the Social Media Intern at EAL, he writes blog posts and manages the Twitter and email accounts. He enjoys running, hiking, playing loud music, watching the New England Patriots, meeting new people, and traveling in his spare time.  He is also on a lifelong quest to find the perfect cheeseburger. Kris finds meaning through his work at EAL because he believes that public perception of non-English speakers in our society can be unfairly negative. “I feel that helping dispel that notion by teaching English to non-natives helps them become more heard and respected, and that has a lot of value.”

• Matthew Dowd (Matty) is a senior at Tufts University double majoring in International Relations and French. He works with Irene and Kaleigh to maintain the Attendance Sheets for EAL Conversation Groups, enter new learners into the Access/SMARTT databases in order to maintain EAL records, and re-design satisfaction surveys for both learners and tutors in order to enhance the Conversation Group experience. He has been working with EAL as a work study student since October of 2013. He really enjoys working here because he feels like the work that he is doing matters to the English learners in EAL programs, whose lives in the United States will be open to new opportunities thanks to English At Large programming. He also very much enjoys the office environment and his co-workers! Besides studying at Tufts and working for EAL, he loves playing guitar, piano, and singing in his band The Saturday Nights.

• Kaleigh Timmins is a senior at Tufts University from Andover, MA, and is majoring in Biology and Community Health. She works with Irene to help organize the one-on-one tutoring program and conversation groups. She does phone intakes and intake assessments, organizes attendance lists, and communicates with learners/interpreters about EAL’s program options. She also led a conversation group in Reading last summer. This is her third year with EAL, which she loves because she enjoys interacting with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and believes that the skills that EAL helps learners achieve will eventually help these learners reach their life goals. In the future, Kaleigh hopes to attend medical school and become a family physician. She attributes many of her people skills and her ability to become a culturally competent and compassionate physician to her work at EAL. She also enjoys the outdoors, coin collecting, reading, and watching Boston sports.  

• Molly Sloane is a senior at Tufts University majoring in Quantitative Economics. She is from Evanston, IL, and is the Music Director of an a cappella group at Tufts. Other than music, she enjoys running, hiking, and other outdoor activities, as well as games, puzzles, and ice cream. As the intern for QJ, the Executive Director for English at Large, Molly does a lot of development work, maintains correspondence with donors, and managed this year’s Spring Auction. She loves working at English at Large because it gives her a unique and integrated view of the Medford community that very few Tufts student get to experience. “Everyone at English at Large: learners, volunteers, donors, and even staff members, have their own story and their own reasons for why they choose to be involved with English at Large. The one thing we all have in common is how much we truly care about the community.”

• Tatyana Pavlova is a graduate student at Cambridge College, working on her Masters of Education in ESL. She completed her Bachelor's degree in Linguistics at Bashkir State University in her home country of Russia. She's from the Republic of Bashkortostan. She enjoys playing the accordion, folk and tango dancing, and playing in her tatar band "Bajram" in Boston and invites you to attend her performances! Tatyana has been blogging for English at Large since August 2013, she has facilitated EAL conversation groups, and she currently teaches ESL in Taunton Public Schools. She likes to use the Language Experience Approach in her teaching. Tatyana is not a native English speaker, and she explains that, "Being a struggling second language learner myself, I bumped into many difficulties. I like to write about my own experience to help tutors understand better the struggles of second language learners and find ways to overcome them."

Speaking for myself and the other interns, we love working for English At Large and are very appreciative of all your efforts as tutors. It's good to know that we're all making a difference.

Happy tutoring!
Kris

Kristofer Pieper
Programs and Social Media Intern, English At Large
Tufts University, Class of 2016

ENGLISH AT LARGE
Literacy and Learning for Life
Join the conversation