Laurie Stankavich

• Position

  English Teacher

• Reason for Being at USA
  1. I feel God called me here.
  2. I'm excited about project-based learning, because I've been thinking of many of these ideas on my own in my previous teaching and I've been frustrated with how ineffective traditional education can be.
  3. I want to get experience teaching in the United States.

• One Paragraph Life Story

  I was born in Mexico, so soy Mexicana. However, my American parents guaranteed me duel citizenship and in fact, took me back to the States before I spoke either English or Spanish. I was homeschooled a lot growing up, but I survived it. I've always been interested in languages. I tried to teach myself Latin at twelve, and Indonesian at Andrews Academy, so I guess it was inevitable that I'd be a linguist eventually. Before that happened, though, I graduated from Andrews Academy and went to Andrews University where I considered almost every major they offered before settling down with a journalism major and chemistry minor. My junior year I went as a student missionary to Taiwan and finally learned a language well enough to speak it to people--Mandarin Chinese. I got hooked on living overseas and returned as a missionary to Taiwan, Korea, China, and Costa Rica where I finally learned Spanish. Somewhere in there I squeezed in a Master's degree in Texas and a year in California where I discovered I like working with academy students. Before coming to USA, I spent four years teaching at a brand-new SDA academy in downtown Taipei, Taiwan, and where three of my colleagues had either worked at or graduated from Union Springs Academy.

• High School

  Andrews Academy

• College

  Andrews University, University of Texas at Arlington

• Degrees

  B.S. Journalism, M.A. Linguistics

• Hobbies

  reading, exploring new places, outdoor sports--especially rock climbing, surfing and snow sports, photography, playing musical instruments

• Food

  dumpling-type soup served by Muslim minority in Western China, also seaweed, rhubarb pie, kimchi fried rice, etc., etc.

• Status

  Single as in "Are you married?" "Not yet!"