Meg Eubank, a professor of Developmental Reading at Bucks, with over a decade of experience teaching English as a second language, has been named as the recipient of the 2022 TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Teacher of the Year Award.
Eubank, who was chosen from applicants from all over the world feels “very honored” to receive this international-level award. “An award like this makes me feel recognized for the work that I did,” says Eubank. The award, presented by National Geographic Learning, honors exceptional English language teaching at all levels.
Part of the assessment criteria for the award is based on the “ability to lead, serve, inspire and positively impact students as well as colleagues and the community.”
“One of the biggest drives in my career,” says Eubank, “is student success.” She has been working a lot recently as the reading professor at Bucks, with many ESL students.
Her goal “is to try to get to know each of my students as humans and know their academic goals and figure out the best ways to help them succeed,” she says. “Bucks is really good about having so many different avenues and resources for students,” modestly adding that she is “just the connector person who helps people find what they need here.”
Eubank’s dedication extends beyond the grammar and curriculum of the classroom. Creating a connection and a community within every ESL classroom is her passion, and what makes her job so rewarding.
“One of the most poignant aspects of an ESL classroom or an ESL community,” she reflects, “is that everybody is bonding over learning a new culture and learning a new language.” A diverse group of students come together in a class and that “shared experience with each other” becomes a bond that “creates a huge sense of community,” she adds.
Creating that sense of community is central to her teaching and was even more important when the pandemic changed everything for everyone. Eubank concedes that the past two years have been difficult for everyone. “I think teachers have worked incredibly hard during this time to try to reach their students,” she says. She immediately tailored her lessons in the online world “utilizing technology in a really creative and interesting way,” and explored new opportunities to “connect to my students and still build community,” she says.
The pandemic also meant that some of her students had to return to their respective home countries, so at one stage she was teaching in five different time zones. As she found new and interesting ways to teach and connect with her students her “teaching got way more creative and it got better,” becoming “stronger because it needed to be,” she says.
Eubank is looking forward to attending the hybrid TESOL 2022 Convention English Language Expo, planned for March 22-25 in Pittsburgh, where she will be honored and meet last year’s winning recipient.
Eubank loves what she does. She is extremely grateful to her “wonderful colleagues” at Bucks, “who have been incredibly supportive,” she says. “Everybody works so well together, and we all have this common goal of supporting the students.”
The opportunity to teach ESL students has “given me a chance to feel like I traveled the world without going anywhere,” says Eubank. “Sometimes I feel there’s this little United Nations, a small version of that, here on campus, all working together” she says. “At the beginning of the year you’d walk in, and it would be 12 strangers, but then by the end of the semester you’d have 12 people who felt like a family.”