Dr. Sylvia Castro and Dr. Melida Gonzalez, from the Houston and Austin areas, recently spent three week here are the Monastery teaching ESL to the five student monks in the above picture.  It was a time of intense study by these monks which consisted of classes with each other and one-on-one tutoring.  They spent several hours each day working on their skills.  The progress they made in all areas of English, conversational interactions, reading, speaking, and listening was truly remarkable.  It easily showed the value of having certified ESL teachers, as are Dr. Castro and Dr. Gonzalez, and of having the monks be temporarily freed from their ordinary routine duties to focus completely on studying and learning English for a period of time.

At the conclusion of this advanced class, certificates of accomplishment were given to each of the students and each student made a public presentation of essays and other writings to demonstrate their skills.  A question and answer period followed and the Abbot was extremely pleased at the level of communication that these five monks were capable of achieving.

As a result of the success of this advanced ESL class, and at the strong recommendation of both of the teachers, we are now looking for other teachers who might be willing to volunteer to come here for a few weeks to teach. We are only asking for teachers, male or female, who are in fact properly “certified” for teaching ESL. There are strategies and skills with which certified teachers are familiar and that makes it important for us to ask for just such teachers.  If you have an interest, please contact our director of education at his email address: monksimeon08@gmail.com.