The STV German Language School

Instructor Biographies

Elke Damesyn, M.A., Instructor
M.A. degree in TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Anaheim University. B.S. degree in agriculture and horticulture from Fachhochschule, Osnabrück, Germany. Has verbal aptitude in German, English, and Portuguese. Certified tester in German at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Va. Teaching experience at Berlitz International, Rockville, Md. Instructor in German at National Foreign Affairs Training Center, Arlington, Va. Teacher of English and History for 6th grade students at Swedish Community, Luanda, in Angola. German instructor for adult education at Goethe Sector, in Windhoek, Nambia.

Heidi Wells, Instructor
A native of Munich, Germany, Heidi Wells has been living in the United States since 1996. She attended Lehman College, City University of New York, where she pursued a degree in Multilingual Journalism, as well as Empire State College, State University of New York, where she received a degree in Cultural Studies/Multilingual Media. Heidi's professional experience includes several years of work as an associate editor for the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, a German-American weekly newspaper, and freelance writing assignments for German and Swiss media outlets. For the past few years she has been contracting work as a translator and as an editor, with an emphasis on promotional material (websites, brochures) for corporate clients. With a passion for language(s) and culture, Ms. Wells has previously also taught German to children and adults. She has a keen interest in bilingualism and bilingual education, and naturally, she is raising her two children bilingually. In her spare time, Heidi enjoys spending time with family and friends, traveling, horseback-riding and cooking.

Marta Neves, Children's Class Instructor
Marta Neves has reached the final phase of her studies which she specialized in linguistics to earn the Bachelor of Arts Degree in Modern Philology. Marta began her university studies at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany. She received the Socrates Erasmus fellowship to study abroad and completed two academic exchanges. One of them she attended at the Universitat de Barcelona in Spain and the other at the Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza in Poland. During her stay in Poland she was a German Instructor at the language school Litera Plus. In Germany she was tutoring pupils additional private lessons through KeepSchool, a tutoring school located in Berlin, Germany. Marta has verbal aptitude in German, English, Spanish and Polish. Her hobbies include art, photography and poetry.

Susannah Martin, PhD. – Director
Susannah Martin earned an Associate of Arts Degree from Sacramento City College in Humanities, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in German Area Studies with a minor in Philosophy, a Master of Arts Degree in German Language and Literature, and a Doctorate in German Language and Literature with a Designated Emphasis in Second Language Acquisition, all from University California, Davis. Mrs. Martin studied at the Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, Germany for a year during her undergraduate studies and was invited to do doctoral research at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, where she also lived for a year. Additionally, Mrs. Martin worked for Migrosbank in St. Gallen, Switzerland during graduate school and did further dissertation research while living in Zurich, Switzerland. She has been teaching since 1995, first as an Associate Instructor of German for UC Davis (1995-2002), then in English at the In Lingua International Language School in Berlin, Germany, as an Instructor of German at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, and also as an instructor of DaF (Deutsche als Fremdsprache) for the UC/EAP program at the Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, Germany. Mrs. Martin currently teaches German at the Sacramento Waldorf School and is an adjunct Professorof German at American River College in Sacramento.

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