Samantha (“Sam”) Linehan is known for teaching 7th grade and 8th grade English Language & Literature at AISB. Here, she shares her personal anecdotes about teaching students in many different countries around the whole world. 

What follows is Samantha’s story, in her own words:

I remembered that I loved to read and I’ve always liked reading about history. My English teacher when I was in high school, she kind of encouraged me because I like to read and because I like history. My mom was a teacher and so getting to see her schedule and her calendar, getting summers off, good vacations and that kind of thing, that kind of inspired me. I like working with kids, teaching and sharing some things that I enjoy doing with kids and helping them learn these new things and skills. And so I think that all of that kind of came together to make me become a teacher.

I think I would say that I encourage kids as much as possible through small group discussions to come to their own conclusions, modeling some of that thinking out loud for students, and then encouraging them to try it out for themselves.

Photo taken by Vika C.

I taught in Arizona in the United States and, from there, I went to Bangladesh and I taught on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capitol. However, the school was located in a tiny village called Singer Dighi. One day we were driving from my school, and my school is kind of out in the country, and literally a man was riding an elephant and he stopped us and we got robbed by the elephant. The elephant stuck his trunk into our car and the man wouldn’t move the elephant until we gave him some money.

And then from there, I went to Warsaw, Poland, actually within the CEESA conference, and I was there for five years. And then I went to Hong Kong, and now I’m back in Europe here in Bucharest.

I did my student teaching in South Africa, at an all girls school where I taught grade seven, eight, and nine. There I felt like it was really important that they wore uniforms [as part of the dress code] because it made a level playing field and it made it very even and nobody had to worry about wearing cool clothes, or if they couldn’t afford it, or anything like that. And so I really thought that was a great way to make it all about the learning and being in class and participating and enjoying being in school because there wasn’t weird competition about clothes or boys.