Staff

Renee Lajcak
Renee has taught English in the US, Japan and Indonesia for over 20 years. Her teaching experiences range from tutoring illiterate refugees in Survival English to teaching university deans and professors Academic English. Renee has taught all levels of communication and grammar. This breadth of practical experience combined with knowledge in curriculum design and teacher training bring techniques and approaches to the Skills and Techniques 1 course, making it relevant to a wide variety of teaching situations.

Renee is the program director of Midwest. She maintains contact with many employers and most Midwest graduates, even visiting some of them overseas, thereby gaining the experience necessary to provide job placement assistance to Midwest trainees.

Renee holds a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction, specializing in ESL and a K-12 teaching license in ESL. At present, Renee is studying Spanish and exploring ways to improve and expand the Midwest Teacher Training Program throughout the world, if not the universe.

Sue Manners
Sue has taught English in over 10 institutions in the US, Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea. Sue was trained in the application of each institution’s EFL curriculum and the teaching approaches to best fit the cultural environment and social needs of those particular students and school. Overseas, her students ranged from elementary school children to judges and teachers. She has taught Business English, TOEFL preparation and all levels of conversation, reading, writing and grammar. She has also trained experienced English teachers in the US, China and Taiwan. In addition, Sue owned and managed her own EFL school in Taiwan.

Although Sue has used a wide variety of ESL methods, she stays on top of new ideas and methodologies in the field, such as the Lexical Approach. She also continues to train in the area of conflict management, facilitator training and intercultural communicative competence. She is adept at communicating and relating to people from a great variety of backgrounds and cultures. This wealth of experience and her flexibility allow Midwest to call upon Sue to teach occasional courses and a seminar on classroom management.

Daniel Perreth
Dan has almost 20 years of experience teaching English in the US and in Japan, where he taught at Kwassui Women’s Junior College.  In the US, he has taught both university-bound international students and new immigrants.  In addition to teaching, Dan was the Curriculum and Teacher Coordinator at WESLI, giving him a wealth of experience in overseeing curriculum design and assisting both new and experienced ESL teachers.

Dan is the main instructor for the Lesson Planning course, where he employs both his teaching and curriculum design skills.  He holds a master’s degree in English as a Second Language and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Because of this unique combination, Dan also presents a seminar on teaching Business English and has been the Business English guru to hundreds of international students.  Dan continues to explore ways to promote Midwest overseas while developing his own skills as a teacher trainer and facilitator.

Amy Osorio
Amy is one of the instructor observers of the practice teaching component.  As director of WESLI, Midwest’s parent school, Amy is intimately familiar with what employers are looking for in a trained English instructor.  She combines her experience as director of both an ESL school in the US and her own EFL school in Venezuela with ESL and EFL teaching experiences to provide a fair and balanced evaluation of trainees’ abilities to teach in the classroom.

Amy holds a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and is conversant in a wide variety of languages. As if that wasn’t enough, she also runs marathons!

Beth Winnowski
Beth breathes, loves and lives grammar.  She injects the Grammar Review class with energy and life, helping those who have forgotten (or never really learned) the intricacies of English grammar.

Beth holds a MATESOL certificate and a BS in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin. She has taught all levels of grammar in both the US and Canada, in addition to freshman composition at five universities.  Beth also developed ESL video listening materials while living in Montreal.

Beth continues to search for new and exciting ways to help spread the gospel of grammar.

Christina Eddington
Christina is an experienced ESL professional who is skilled at all levels and skills of ESL. She holds a master’s in TESOL and has worked in a private language school, community college, and university settings. Christina has taught both in the US and in South Africa. Christina has experience in test development, materials editing and classroom research, and has presented and co-presented research at the TESOL conference for international English teachers.

Christina has taught seminars on cross-cultural adjustment and assessment and has been an instructor-observer in Practice Teaching. As someone who has always enjoyed all aspects of teaching and learning languages, Christina has studied Spanish, French, Afrikaans and Arabic, and aims to study Turkish next. Christina loves bicycling, world music and promoting locally-grown foods.