Holly Jensen tells us about her innovative and flexible English solutions, so you don't have to go to lessons everyday!

I'm here with teacher Holly Jensen. Holly, where are you in the world? 

I'm actually living in California. In the United States.

And you are an English teacher? 

Yes, ma 'am. 

Tell me more about the people that you teach. What kind of learners do you have? 

Well, it's interesting. Currently I'm working for several companies teaching, test prep and general English. But I'm also working to build a business and, this will focus more on, I'm Developing asynchronous, meaning lessons that don't focus so much on meeting with me live or if you do meet with me live, it's for a shorter time because one of the needs that I see is really busy people. People are busy and they need to work on their English, but they don't have much time. So, I want to meet that need, but I work with, gosh, in the companies, I work with adults of all ages. Yes, I have worked with students in their 70s and students in their 20s, early 20s or even 19 years old. So, I have a lot of experience. 

Tell me about your self -study course that you're developing. What's that about? 

Well, it's not exactly self -study. what it is, I'm developing a couple of things. So one of them is I have a challenge, it's an email challenge, and basically you can do different levels. You can do 20 days, you can do 40 days, or 60 days, and every other day you receive a question, and you need to respond to it inside of 48 hours in speaking or writing depending on what you want to work on and then I will respond to you with some corrections as well as encouragement. What are you doing well and what do you need to work on? And I even help you with resources because another problem that I see sometimes is that students don't know exactly what resources are good. Right, yes. So I help with that. And then on the days when you don't receive the questions, you receive tips. Helping you become a better student of English if you want to go with self -study, if not, it helps you get an idea of what working with me might be like. The other thing is that I have, I call them messenger lessons, so we use your favorite messenger. It be iMessage, could be Facebook Messenger, whatever you like, and I give you the lessons. I send you material or I send you, something, I send you material or I give you directions and you, uh, do the studying and then you give me your answers for feedback or you can ask me questions or if you just hear something in English that is really confusing, you can send me a question and that is unlimited for a monthly price. So it's like classes, but it does not depend on trying to make our schedules connect. 

That's great. It's so, I find in my everyday life, I'm in Japan and I'm learning Japanese. And yeah, as I go about life, I think, how do I say this in Japanese? And yeah, when you're not in the lesson at the time, it totally goes out of your head. 

Yeah this solves that problem. Yeah that sounds great. Because you can just shoot me a text and you know I might not get back to you the next second but you will get an answer. 

Yes yeah well yeah while your mind is on that how do I say this? Is this right? Yeah that's great. 

One of my students said, it's like, she says, it's like a dream come true. I take you with me wherever I go. 

Awesome. Yeah, a teacher in your pocket.  

OK, so what kind of people do you think would take advantage of these these offers of having a teacher in your pocket? 

Well, I really think one group that it would definitely benefit is people who have immigrated to the United States and are living and working here. So, I have never been able to make myself stay with one piece of English, just grammar, just pronunciation, because it's all fascinating to me, first of all. It's like a dance. I say that English or any language is a dance between art and science and I want to communicate that to my students. And they fit together like a puzzle. They affect each other. So I started thinking, you know, who needs all that? Who really needs all those pieces to that puzzle? And one group that I feel definitely would benefit from it is people who have immigrated here and are living and working here and they want to build connections here. They need to survive here and that's an everyday struggle. But they're busy trying to do life. And so that's why one of the reasons why I'm developing these other programs. 

Yeah, I know the feeling, living in Japan and trying to learn Japanese and then just, yeah, the survival is what takes over, really. 

Yeah. You're so tired from your job. But you don't really want to sit in front of a camera for an hour trying to learn from a teacher. But at the same time, you really need the English. So, you know, with the messenger lessons, it's right here. 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It makes me think some people say: immersion. They they think if they move to an English speaking country, they'll be immersed in English and then they'll just become somehow magically fluent but that's not true. 

That only works for a small portion of students. That's another thing that I like to focus on. So, to me there are a few pieces. So, you know, if you look at writing and speaking and listening and all of those things. Of course, those have skills that you need to develop. But at the foundation, what makes you a good listener, speaker, writer, and reader? It's grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and sort of the cultural way that we put all of that together. So, that's what I focus on. But then you have the inner work, motivation, understanding yourself, understanding challenges, even time management. If a student is really having trouble figuring out where to find the time, we can focus on time management a little bit because that has been a struggle for me and I've learned a lot about it over the years. So we look at that's part of my framework, but also so many times people say this is the right way to learn English for everybody. No, this is the right way to learn English for everybody, But if you look at history, all of the, I don't know, million ways that there are to learn a language have worked for somebody. And that tells me is that it's because every learner is different. So one of the very first things we do is look at your learning style. What is it? And what does that tell us about the kinds of materials you need or the order that your lessons should go in? 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so important, isn't it? It's Yeah. It's definitely true that there's not one solution for everyone. Not even in your lifetime. You might go from one thing to another thing to another thing. And that's fun. That's fine. Yeah. Great. 

OK, so tell me, in all your experience, are there any learners that are really memorable for you that have made a big leap through or that you've helped in some way? 

Oh, goodness, so many. But yeah, we don't have that kind of time. I have to tell you about... We'll just go by his nickname, Sasha, for privacy's sake. He was an older gentleman in his early 60s. This was kind of early in my career. I started teaching in 2014 and I met this gentleman in 2015. And we had, he scheduled a trial lesson with the company that we were connected through. And the email, or the bit of information that he provided, it sounded like he had a little bit of, you know, more intermediate than beginner. But when I got into the lesson, I met a gentleman, it turned out his son had signed him up. Because the website was in English, so yeah, so I met this gentleman who was very shy. He knew a few words, we could greet each other, he knew a couple words, but he was very shy, very reserved but he was from Ukraine and he was you know and I know a bit of Russian okay so we kind of mixed a little Russian in with English and he had a good time laughing at me, my mistakes. I laughed at myself. He just started opening up. And I found out about a year later that he got through with either that lesson or the next, the first paid lesson. He got through with it and he told his family, he says, now I want to learn English. That was amazing and I ended up teaching him for a few months and then his wife joined us in a group. She was a bit higher level so I was able to play with the learning styles and she was more outgoing so I would let her give the examples or try first, and then he would follow, and that worked just fine. 

Brilliant. Oh, that's so nice. That's, yeah, that's all you want as a teacher, isn't it? Just, oh, your learner just once has suddenly found a reason to learn. 

Yeah, yeah. And then my very first student, I still write him on my teacher birthday, March 11th, because that was the day I met, I had my very first trial lesson with my very first online student. And it was actually my very first official, okay, now I'm a professional. I'm not just a volunteer helping somewhere. That doesn't know what she's doing. Yeah, that did happen. I met with him and we had, you know, internet problems and all these things. We got some of that sorted out. We had a few lessons and I forget exactly what the conversation was about, but he started opening up about some of his emotional hiccups or frustrations. And I was able to give him encouragement. And so every once in a while, I to him on my teacher birthday, and I just say, you know, I just want to say thank you again. Oh. And so this last March was 10 years. Yeah. And wrote me back, and he said, you know, thank you, you gave me the confidence to, you know, I still have struggles, but you gave me the confidence to keep going. 

Oh, that's great. Oh, so nice to keep in touch. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we're not teachers without their learners. So, yeah. 

No, absolutely not. Excellent. They are the heroes of the story. 

 But why do you come back to being an English teacher? What is so compelling about being a teacher? 

The people, the people and just the amazing thing that language is, but mostly the people. And somewhat the challenge of it. I actually went through some personal tragedy not too long ago and I took a step back. from teaching English, I was still doing it, but very little, and I was working a local job, teaching for our local blindness center. I was teaching living skills and technology, and it was very fulfilling work, but once some of the smoke, shall we say, cleared from the tragedies that had happened. I had some, I met some clients that were originally from other countries and I was working with them and I even worked with them in a group session and we were talking about, you know some things and it was just the whole group was multicultural and it lit me on fire and you know just some things it was like God was telling me now you need to go back yeah yeah here I am yeah I see right it's the challenge isn't it But yeah, as you said, the is good, but the language bit as well, yeah, it's like special. Or when a student comes to you with a difficult question and you're like, oh goodness, I need to research that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And you get all, get your books out, oh, yeah. Yeah, well, I did, I searched it on the internet and I have a linguistics background, so in In head, I'm getting a little bit geeky about the, oh my gosh, I had no idea that's why we do it like that. 

Right, yeah, yeah, it's the extra sort of, yeah, why, I think that's why all language teachers, like why, why, why this, why that, why, why, yeah. 

Oh yeah, they ask why, That's a student's favourite question. Why or how? And that's fine. That's wonderful. That's what makes this job interesting. That's it. And I just love people. 

I can see that's coming through. Great. 

Well, thank you, Holly. That was really interesting to meet you. 

You too. Thank you so much for having me. 

Get in touch with Holly at the Elevate directory of English language teachers