Stepping off the plane and instantly seeing and hearing unfamiliar text and language, smelling exotic, sometimes not so pleasant aromas and observing foreign customs and behaviours is something that impassions me. In my 39 years, I have been fortunate enough to travel to 25 countries and experience, first-hand what it feels like to travel and live in other places, experience different cultures, be a language learner and have to adapt to new cultural norms and attitudes.

I lived and taught English as a Second Language (ESL) for eight years in South Korea. My classes were 100% homogeneous, in the traditional sense. All students were of South Korean descent, spoke the same language and, for the most part, had very similar life experiences.

The class on ELLs in the Ontario classroom opened my mind a bit to the type of learner that will be in my future classrooms. Now knowing that Ontario has the highest proportion of ESL learners in the country, it will be imperative, as a teacher in Ontario, to promote cultural awareness and engage them in culturally diverse lessons.  Embracing the differences and similarities in their individual cultures and languages can help ELLs thrive.

This travel map/website represents my love of travel and how English Language Learners (ELLs) come from culturally diverse backgrounds to the Ontario classroom.

The different coloured lines represent that students may have come here from different cultures or by different means, but all have value, a skill set to communicate and previous knowledge and experiences that need to be embraced.

The captions that are posted on the photos are an attempt to merge my past cultural experiences with key takeaways that we covered in the class on English Language Learners.