Why I quit NASA to become an ESL Teacher
- [Tiffani] Hey!
My name is Teacher Tiffani
and I want to tell you something.
I used to work for NASA.
Yeah, that’s right.
NASA.
But one day I quit and I decided
to become an English teacher.
Today I want to tell you my story.
Welcome to Speak English with Tiffani.
I am Teacher Tiffani.
Let’s jump right in.
It all started in the year 2000.
That’s the year that I went to university,
and I had two majors.
My first major was Computer Science
because I loved computers,
and my second major was Commercial Art
because I had always,
and I still do love art.
In 2004, I graduated.
It had been a great four years, but now
it was time to move forward in life.
After graduation I received a phone call.
It led to an interview.
The interview was great,
and because the interview was so great,
you guessed it, I got a job at NASA.
Everything was amazing.
My job at NASA was as a web developer.
I designed multiple websites
for different sectors of NASA.
It was great.
I was a part of the
planning, the development,
and the maintenance of multiple websites.
I had an amazing boss, who treated
his employees with the utmost respect,
and I also had amazing coworkers.
So I have so many good memories
about my time at NASA.
But while I was working there,
I started to feel like
something was missing.
You see, remember I was an artist,
and I wanted to use my art
to directly help people.
During this time of trying to figure out
what I should do with my life,
I had some friends who had lived in Korea,
some of them for a few months,
and some of them for a couple of years,
and they raved about
how amazing Korea was.
So I thought to myself
maybe I should also go to Korea.
So, in 2009, that’s exactly what I did.
I took the long 14-hour flight
and went to South Korea.
My time in South Korea was spent
as a missionary English teacher.
I had so many students from businessmen
to businesswomen, doctors, lawyers,
homemakers, stay-at-home moms.
It was amazing!
I had thousands of students
and I loved all of them.
But there was something that happened.
You see, as I was spending time
with my students, I started noticing
how hard they were studying.
They were studying English grammar,
English expressions, English vocabulary,
English pronunciation, and English idioms,
and something came to mind.
It was a quote from Nelson Mandela.
The quote says, “If you talk to a man
“in a language he understands,
“that goes to his head.
“If you talk to him in his language,
“that goes to his heart.”
You see, what was
happening in my heart was
I desired to reach my students
truly and sincerely, I wanted to speak
to their hearts, which meant
I also had to start studying.
And that’s when I decided to study Korean,
Korean grammar, expressions, everything.
And at that time this is
what my schedule looked like.
I would wake up at 4 am every day,
study for about four hours,
then take a shower, and at 9 am
I would go to my Korean classes,
which lasted about three hours.
Then I would come back home, eat lunch,
and start work at 2 pm
and finish at 10 pm.
This was my schedule for about 10 months.
All because I wanted to reach my students,
I wanted to learn a language
just like they were learning a language.
But what happened is, as I was studying,
I began to understand how to transition
from a beginner to an
intermediate learner,
and then from an intermediate
to an advanced learner.
And I decided to take what I was learning
to my students, to my intermediate,
advanced students, and I wanted
to teach them what I had learned,
the principles and the concepts.
So I started teaching
them how to give a speech,
how to develop and organize your ideas,
how to speak English with confidence,
how to make long sentences, and so many
other things that were not taught
in the class before that.
And something amazing happened.
My students began to improve very quickly.
It was like a light bulb went off
in their head, and their speech
and their way of thinking in English
improved rapidly.
So, then I started
thinking a little bit more.
If my students at my classroom
were improving so much,
how about starting a YouTube channel
where I can help even more students?
So I started Speak English With Tiffani.
Now, initially my plan was only
to help Korean students.
But what I realized was
that Indian students,
Vietnamese students, Japanese students,
all of these students
from around the world
started to watch my YouTube channel,
and they were learning the same concepts,
and they were improving their English.
So, in 2018, I left Korea.
I moved back to America and decided
to continue teaching English online
to help ESL students across the world.
So what’s my goal?
Why did I do it?
Why did I leave NASA to teach English,
and why am I still doing it?
Here’s the reason.
I want to help one million students.
That’s my goal.
I’m Teacher Tiffani.
If you haven’t received your free
Speak English Ebook yet,
go to SpeakEnglishWithTiffani.com/ebook
right now.
I know that this ebook will help you
improve your English and also help you
understand more of the expressions
that native English speakers use.
And remember you can also watch
my next English video lesson
on the left by clicking it.
If you ever need help,
remember you can also email me
I want to help you speak English
and enjoy doing it.