Peggy Khoury

A second generation Californian, I was born and raised in Pasadena. While I was in college I studied Italian, Art and Art History for a year in Florence, Italy. I didn't speak any Italian before I went there, so I was in a situation similar to many of our current College of the Canyons students with no knowledge of the new language. I was in a small class of about 12 students from all over the world. Our only common language was Italian, forcing all of us to speak Italian. It was a wonderful experience, one I will never forget. This is what started my love of interacting with international people. On my return to the US, I started working at Princess Cruises in their office in Century City, California. I was the Corporate Trainer, teaching a three-week class to reservations agents about all the information they needed to answer calls about cruises. I went on 13 cruises, visiting many beautiful and exotic places. While working there, I met my husband-to-be, Paul. We both enjoy traveling and have been to many incredible places all over the world. Following Princess Cruises, I worked for 11 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena for the European Space Agency, as a Spacecraft Scheduler, creating plans which uplinked Ulysses, a spacecraft orbiting the polar ends of the sun with the ground stations located in California, Australia and Spain. I worked with engineers from many countries, including England, India, Spain, Portugal, Malaysia, Northern Ireland, and Germany. While working there, I completed my Bachelors degree (Liberal Arts) at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. From there, I worked at various temporary jobs including M2 and Borax, then I began working at St. Jude Medical in the Software Development department. There were engineers from all over the world there. I had a lot of fun meeting all these people. But my heart was not in my job so I decided that I would go back to UCLA and get my TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate. When I was about to finish the program, I was required to volunteer in an ESL classroom for 120 hours during one quarter. I was lucky enough to connect with Doris Schiller, a fantastic teacher at College of the Canyons, who acted as my Mentor teacher. I enjoyed it so much that the following semester, once I had completed all of my training, I asked to come back the following semester to work with Doris! She taught me many, many wonderful things, and I am forever thankful to her for spending the time with me. In summer, 2007, I was hired to teach my own class. My first classes were pre-level which meant the students did not speak any English. I was often asked how many different languages I spoke, to which I would always reply, one. I was amazed and pleasantly surprised to watch non-English speakers begin to grasp the language. It made me recall my learning experience back in Italy. I truly believe I have the best job in the world. I meet wonderful people everyday, and I love watching their knowledge improve every day. I always tell my students that if I win millions of dollars in the lottery, I would continue to teach English as a Second Language. That is how much I love my job.