English

Derek Soles has a PhD in English education, from the University of Victoria, and many years experience as an English professor, writing program director, and department head at several colleges and universities in Canada and the U.S., most recently at UBC.

He is the author of several textbooks, including The Essentials of Academic Writing. Derek’s teaching style is eclectic but based mainly upon his belief that learning should be fun.

Graeme Abernethy has more than ten years of university teaching experience in Britain, Canada, and Nigeria.

He has published numerous academic articles on the politics of literary and visual representation, as well as a book, The Iconography of Malcolm X (2013).

His teaching emphasizes diversity and interdisciplinarity, drawing from literary and cultural studies and encouraging the development of a broad range of communication and critical thinking skills.

He completed his PhD (English) in 2011 at University College London.

Bethany Suvak completed her B.A. Honours and Master’s degree in English at Simon Fraser University (2010, 2012) where she discovered her passion for teaching as a TA for several undergraduate courses.

She also has a Master’s in Education specializing in languages and diversity from the University of Calgary (2016). She has been teaching at Alexander College since 2017.

She is passionate about skills-based learning, favouring an active learning approach for her students. Bethany always strives to help her students gain confidence when approaching their English language and composition tasks, with an appreciation of how these skills are valuable and applicable both in other scholarly settings and outside of school.

Bethany is also a certified in TESL and as an Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) Facilitator.

Martin Behr has been teaching Academic Writing and English Literature for over 20 years and has taught at Alexander College since 2010.

Throughout his career, he has taught at a number of post-secondary institutions in Canada and the United States.

He graduated with a MA in English from McGill University (1992) and a BA in English from Simon Fraser University (1990). He has authored a number of scholarly publications, including a book entitled Critical Moments in the Rhetoric of Kenneth Burke: Implications for Composition.

His teaching methods draw from scholarship in rhetoric and composition, genre theory, and literary studies, and focus primarily on approaching writing as a process, critical thinking, and collaborative learning. Martin’s passion for teaching makes him dedicated to the success of his students and to the rich learning environment at Alexander College.

Sarah Brown has taught English at Alexander College since 2019. Previously, she taught at Concordia University in Montreal, where she completed her graduate degree in English and Creative Writing.

She also has experience in business writing, technical writing, and scriptwriting. Sarah’s teaching style is influenced by cultural and gender studies, drawing connections between literature and lived experiences.

She fosters a creative and collaborative learning environment for her students.

Outside the classroom, Sarah’s fiction writing has been published across Canada and nominated for the national Bronwen Wallace Award and Journey Prize.

Tamar has taught English composition and literature in Vancouver for five years, focusing on students who are not native English speakers.

Having studied and worked in five countries, she is multilingual and attuned to cultural differences. She enjoys teaching students to express themselves clearly and to experience literary art as fully as possible.

Tamar’s writing projects include fiction and creative non-fiction. In addition, she has 15 years of experience in corporate communications.Tamar earned BA and MA degrees in English Literature from Swarthmore College and Yale University. She also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Tomasz Michalak has been teaching university writing and literature at Alexander College since 2009. He has a PhD from the English Department at UBC where he taught as an instructor and was a TA in the English, Civil Engineering, and CENES departments.

Tomasz moved permanently to Canada in 1989. He started as an international student by taking 1st year college and university courses at Langara College and SFU where he completed a BA and an MA in English.

His teaching style promotes creativity, critical thinking, and cultural integration.

Garrett Peck has been teaching English for 15 years, first in Taiwan as an ESL instructor and for the past 10 years at several post-secondary institutions in Vancouver.

He has been an instructor at Alexander College since 2009 and formerly served as the English Department Coordinator.

Garrett has received both a BA and an MA in English from SFU and spent four years working on his PhD in English at UBC. Garrett is interested in Victorian literature, travel writing, and the rhetoric of science, and has published several academic articles in these research areas.

Kate O’Neill completed her undergraduate and Master’s degree at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario between 1999-2006, and her PhD. at the University of Calgary, 2007-2012.

She has been teaching at Alexander College since 2013.

Her academic interests are politically and socially motivated; her teaching style is high-energy and creative. Kate’s students learn to express their original ideas with structure and confidence.

Neha has been working around the English language for more than ten years, supporting diverse learner groups, including corporate sectors and young learners. She has been facilitating academic skills classrooms at Alexander College for three years and started working with short fiction about a year ago.

She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in education and completed her Master’s in Education specializing in Teaching English as an Additional Language (TEAL), both from SFU. Additionally, Neha holds master’s degrees in Literature, Linguistics and History, respectively from India. Neha is also a certified TESL instructor.

Neha believes teaching is a meaning-making, interactive process where the facilitator and learners participate equally to pose questions, seek answers and take action. Her teaching philosophy involves supporting the learners through love, care, mutual trust and knowledge, facilitating activities that encourage interaction and respectful participation.

Her facilitating methods focus on approaching learning as a process, drawing from knowledge not just from books but from the diversity carried by people and cultures.

Simon Binder has been teaching English internationally and domestically for over ten years. He received his undergraduate degree and TESL certification from the University of the Fraser Valley in 2011, and has since taught in Japan, Korea, India, Germany, and of course, Canada.

Simon completed his graduate work at UBC (MEd) and abroad in Germany at the University of Freiburg (MA), with a focus on student engagement and the student-centered classroom, and postcolonialism in literature, respectively.

He is committed to the ideology of an authentically intersectional and multicultural educational community, as well as the necessity of anti-racist / anti-sexist / anti-colonial / community-based educational practices. He also strongly believes in the importance of lifelong learning, critical thinking, ongoing research into and adoption of Indigenous educational principles, and ecological narratives in the classroom and beyond.

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Swati Mishra has over 10 years of university teaching experience in Canada and India. She completed her PhD in English from Rashtrasant Tukdodi Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU) in India.

The corpus of her research concerns itself with the postmodernist theory of ‘Multiculturalism’ and this has lent her an extensive understanding of multiculturalism, fostering cross-cultural understanding of a diverse student body.

Her research papers have been published in reputed peer-reviewed journals under the scope of Culture Studies.

Before joining Alexander College, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Mumbai, India. Her philosophy of teaching centers around the Multiliteracies Approach, an approach designed to engage learners by focusing on their backgrounds, interests and real-life applications. Her classroom features activities designed to use creative and cognitive skills with an emphasis on close reading, peer review, annotation skills and targeted discussion that reinforce the stated learning outcomes.

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Alois Sieben is an English instructor and researcher with interests in the internet, film and fiction.

He has recently published an article on cyberstalking in Comparative Literature and Culture, a chapter on Inuit throat singing in the edited collection Lacan and the Environment, reviews of Clint Burnham and Matt Flisfeder’s books in Psychoanalysis, Society, and Culture, and appeared on Vanessa Sinclair’s podcast Rendering Unconscious.

He is currently producing a short film called Night Ferry.

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Harman Uppal graduated from UBC & McMaster University where he studied both English literature and creative writing. His research and teaching interests include post-colonial, queer and Asian-Canadian diasporic literature.

His master’s thesis involved writing poetry and integrating Indigenous traditions of storytelling as a way to confront neoliberal modes of marginalization, such as the rapid gentrification of the Punjabi Market in Vancouver and its subsequent effects on local communities.

Harman previously taught at McMaster University. At Alexander College, Harman instructs the following courses: Strategies for University Writing, Introduction to Fiction, & Introduction to Poetry. Outside of academics, Harman enjoys films, fashion, painting, and writing novels in his spare time.

Taylor Breckles holds a BA in Honours English and History, and an MA in English with a Print Culture designation. She specializes in Indigenous Literatures and prioritizes blended methodologies that include both western and Indigenous research perspectives, but she also enjoys Humour Studies, Autofiction, History (European and Canadian), and texts that demonstrate colonial resistance.

Her publications include “Culture and Comedy Among Disney Deuteragonists: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Humour in “Mulan,” in Explorations in Humor Studies: Humor Research Project (2020), a volume for which she was also the editor, and “’Female Rebels’: Finding Women’s Voices in Robert Forbes’s ‘The Lyon in Mourning’” (2022). She is also a freelance editor and has edited volumes such as Reading “Black Mirror”: Insights Into Technology and the Post-Media Condition (transcript Verlag, 2021) and The Object as a Process: Essays Situating Artistic Practice (transcript Verlag, 2023).

She has presented at several international and domestic conferences, and is always looking for opportunities to engage in these dialogues.

A Punjabi born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents, Dr. Summer Pervez grew up in multiple countries and was educated in American schools. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Ottawa, and an MA and BA from Western University. She has taught in various universities in Canada and Pakistan from 2001 onwards, and most recently taught screenwriting in the Writing for Film, TV & Games department at Vancouver Film School where she won a teaching award in 2022.

Her academic specialization is World Literature and Film, with a focus on South Asia and its diasporas. Summer has published a range of articles on literature, film, and music; topics include Hanif Kureishi’s fiction and films, Salman Rushdie’s novels, Wole Soyinka’s theatre, Bollywood and Pakistani horror films, and Pakistani music performed on Coke Studio.

Along with research and teaching, Summer is also a working screenwriter/filmmaker (shorts, features, and docs). After studying filmmaking at the Vancouver Film School in 2013, she made several award-winning short narrative films which have circulated in festivals worldwide. She is currently developing some international short and feature-length film projects, and also researching and writing about Pakistani television dramas.

James Stevenson has a B.A. Honours English from UBC and a Master’s degree in English Literature from Dalhousie University. He has a decade of experience teaching English at BCIT, preparing students for the rigours of academic writing.

James is a published poet and fiction writer, and he likes when different art forms intersect. For example, he wrote over 400 haiku in 400 days (at least one per day without missing a day) overlaid on art and photography. He is passionate about inspiring students to find beauty in literature and in the world around them.

Siavash has earned his PhD and master’s degrees in applied linguistics and his bachelor’sdegree in English language and literature. He holds TESL Canada level three certification and is studying towards his Provincial Instructor Diploma (PIDP). Siavash has extensive experience teaching various graduate and undergraduate courses in academic English, applied linguistics, visual communication, and business communication. His research interests focus on the interaction of language, culture, and cognition.

Shurli Makmillen has taught a range of courses over her career, including academic writing, rhetoric, gender studies and English studies. Much of her research follows her dissertation work (UBC 2010) on the interplay of land, law, and language in historical and present-day treaty making with Indigenous peoples here in B.C. and in Aotearoa New Zealand where she was born.

Her most recent publication is a chapter in Beyond Fitting In: Rethinking First-Gen Writing and Literacy Education (Ritter, 2023) about the writing development of first-generation students at a Historically Black University. Now, as well as teaching, she is working on a systematic analysis of the uptake of Rhetorical Genre Theory in research on/in Indigenous contexts, which she is scheduled to present at the Conference for the Canadian Association for Discourse and Writing in Montreal in June. Theories of language, genre, and rhetoric continue to frame her pedagogy in classroom activities and assignments. But always on her mind, in her work and personal life, is taking time to form a deep appreciation and concern for the earth that sustains us all. Consequently, she loves hiking, travel, gardening, and learning about the flora and fauna of places she visits.

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Gerry Tillman received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.

He has been teaching ESL in the lower mainland since 1999. He joined Alexander College in 2008 as an instructor of 098 and 099 in the EAP program.

Since joining Alexander College Gerry has established himself as a direct and interactive instructor. He has a traditional yet innovative style in the classroom.

Greg has been teaching English for almost thirty years, as a classroom instructor and tutor. Before joining the EAP department at Alexander College in 2015 and the English department in 2021, Greg taught at Vancouver Community College for four years.

He also taught workplace writing skills to the staff of various UN agencies including the UN High Commission for Refugees, the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization.

Greg received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English Literature from York University, and his Bachelor of Education from the University of Toronto. Greg is interested in African American, Indigenous and post-colonial literature and he uses an interactive, student-centered teaching approach.

Jordana Peters completed a B.A. in English and History at Simon Fraser University and her M.A. in English, also at SFU.

Jordana has been working with students in various capacities for years. She worked in Lithuania at the Summer Language Institute with international students from over 50 countries. She also worked for two years as a Teaching Assistant at SFU, where she further developed her love of teaching and her philosophy of education.

Her teaching style is student oriented and holistic with a focus on connecting students to the material and its real-world implications.

Neha has been working around the English language for more than ten years, supporting diverse learner groups, including corporate sectors and young learners. She has been facilitating academic skills classrooms at Alexander College for three years and started working with short fiction about a year ago.

She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in education and completed her Master’s in Education specializing in Teaching English as an Additional Language (TEAL), both from SFU. Additionally, Neha holds master’s degrees in Literature, Linguistics and History, respectively from India. Neha is also a certified TESL instructor.

Neha believes teaching is a meaning-making, interactive process where the facilitator and learners participate equally to pose questions, seek answers and take action.

Her teaching philosophy involves supporting the learners through love, care, mutual trust and knowledge, facilitating activities that encourage interaction and respectful participation. Her facilitating methods focus on approaching learning as a process, drawing from knowledge not just from books but from the diversity carried by people and cultures.

Simon Binder has been teaching English internationally and domestically for over ten years. He received his undergraduate degree and TESL certification from the University of the Fraser Valley in 2011, and has since taught in Japan, Korea, India, Germany, and of course, Canada.

Simon completed his graduate work at UBC (MEd) and abroad in Germany at the University of Freiburg (MA), with a focus on student engagement and the student-centered classroom, and postcolonialism in literature, respectively.

He is committed to the ideology of an authentically intersectional and multicultural educational community, as well as the necessity of anti-racist / anti-sexist / anti-colonial / community-based educational practices. He also strongly believes in the importance of lifelong learning, critical thinking, ongoing research into and adoption of Indigenous educational principles, and ecological narratives in the classroom and beyond.

Cheryl Materi studied Contemporary English Literature at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. She began teaching English in China in 2008 then returned to Canada to complete the MATESOL program at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC. After teaching again in China, Cheryl returned to Canada and moved to Vancouver where she has been teaching at various institutions since 2015. Cheryl has been at Alexander College since 2020, teaching EASL, UPRE, and tutoring in the WLC.

Kim brings extensive tutoring and teaching experience to her role as an Instructor of English for Academic Purposes. She has taught learners from around the world and isdedicated to helping them achieve their language goals.

Before transitioning to teaching, Kim developed a diverse skill set through roles in administrative coordination in higher education, IT management in telecommunications, and corporate governance in the energy sector. She combines this professional experience with her passion for education.

As a teacherpreneur, Kim founded her tutoring business in 2020. She believes in the potential for greatness in every learner and is continuously inspired by her students’ determination to master the English language.