Live and learn creatively, in any language
I work with neurodivergent learners, creatives, academics, (aspiring) polyglots and teachers for more flow, fluency and expertise in their own brains.
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with me here.
I look forward to hearing from you!
All session prices are on a sliding scale and negotiable by your individual circumstance. I will work with you so we can work together or I can suggest other options: learning is a right and should not depend on financial means.
Polyglot Coaching
Individualized strategies and support, tailored to your brain and your goals, for learning any language.
Active Latin and Ancient Greek Fluency
Work on speaking Latin and Ancient Greek, with the main goal (up to you though!) of reading more fluently and understanding without translating. I love working outside canonical texts and after classical periods.
For those who “love learning, hate school!”
With my 7 years of classroom experience teaching neurodivergent gifted students, I’m now working with a wider range of ages on an individual and small group basis to help people rewrite and reclaim their identities as learners and chase their learning needs and wants with joy, effectively. Many or most of my clients have experienced significant distress or trauma in their schooling that has turned learning from play to pain.
My Polyglot Story
I started out as a language teacher through video chat and interactive classrooms through the website iTalki, where I also had my most powerful language learning experiences. I took some lessons from teachers with a fixed curriculum, resources, and homework that I found useful at the beginning stages of learning a new language. Much more often I worked with “Community Tutors”, with whom I simply practiced conversation, learned all they loved about the language, culture, and heritage, took the chance to talk about something that completely enthralled me in the target language, exchanged life stories to practice the past tenses or crazy sci-fi scenarios to practice conditionals and hypotheticals.I read and wrote articles in and about different languages and the “meta-language” of language–linguistics.
The professional teachers with whom I worked best–and in many cases, am still in contact with–were more like “language coaches.” They were competent in and passionate about a range of pedagogies and had at hand recommended language-specific and general polyglot tools and authentic target-language resources for a range of interests. They often had good instincts for or even deep training in the science of SLA (Second Language Acquisition), the research on teaching and learning, and everything to do with human (or artificial or constructed!) languages–the social, political, aesthetic, and cultural issues languages and their teaching bring up.
Most of all, they were creative, responsive, observant, dedicated, and generous. They took me on as a student just as I was and, while we worked in Spanish or German or Scots Gaelic, we also identified and learned to deal with the mental and emotional obstacles I encounter on my language journeys, co-created, experimented, took data, reflected together, and re-created habits, methods, goals, motivators and resources that I loved and felt uniquely effective for me–while being grounded in best linguistic and pedagogical practices. They pushed me and held me, had high expectations and nonjudgmental–with exquisitely good judgment about what could work for me, how to help me most and what was going on for me in times of struggle.
Who I am as a polyglot and fluency coach
Who I am now as a polyglot and coach comes from my history with my own coaches, teachers, mentors, and communities. I aim to be a composite–in my own edition, of course–of the best coaches I have had along the way and draw on the communities who have pushed and held me to give back to my students, mentees and those whom I am in community with and accountable to. I focus on the areas of:
- Fluency coaching in Latin and/or Ancient Greek for those who have had courses or taught themselves grammatical foundations, but want to dramatically boost their proficiency and make the language come alive like any modern one–whether for research purposes, teaching, pastoral care, other professions and vocations, or as autodidacts, enthusiasts and lifelong or non-traditional learners of all neurologies and backgrounds.
- Individual or group courses and sessions on “Linguistics for language learners and polyglots”, where we can explore in as much depth and/or breadth as you want the aspects of language that most fascinate you, or the ones that would most help you set and meet ambitious and fun language-learning goals given your individual profile.
- Polyglot coaching where we explore, refine, build up, experiment with, take care of, and make sustainable your life and identity/ies as a polyglot, whether you’re terrified, curious-but-hesitant, an eager initiate, or an experienced, autonomous language learner looking to deal with specific blocks or more technical problems in your polyglot practice (of course, you are most likely in a mixed state of any number of these stages at different times and in different languages).