Trude Higbee

I've been working as a tutor since 1995, which means I've been in this field for 31 years. I'm a sole proprietor running my own business. My main areas of expertise are language arts and English as a second language (ESL). Language arts includes writing and reading, literature and things like that. In my role, I actually do the tutoring, do the lesson planning, and all of the administration related to running a business. I advertise for new students, do some continuing education on methodology and theory for teaching, and I communicate well with parents about their students' progress, so assessment and progress reports. Before starting my tutoring business, I was a teacher in a college classroom teaching English as a second language. I worked in Taiwan for 1 year and in Korea for 9 years. My most notable professional achievement is closest to my heart - in Korea, I created a program to prepare Korean students and adults to work overseas. The program started with 18 students and 2 teachers, and by the time I left, it was 100 students and 15 teachers. It was very practically oriented, so the methodology we used was completely new in Korea. They hadn't really done experiential learning before. We had the students do things like volunteer in an organization and experience an Indian meal, just do all kinds of experiential things. So many of those students and adults went on to work overseas. It's been very gratifying. My role in that was basically to get the vision and pull it off. I love what I do.