Nolan Burkholder
Since Svetlana Holt was 5 years old, she assumed she would follow in her mother’s grandmother’s, aunts’ and grandfathers’ footsteps and teach. So she did. Education is highly valued in her native country, Russia, so it is prestigious to work as a college instructor or researcher. She graduated from one of the most renowned universities in Russia, majoring in teaching English as a second language (TESL), interpreting and linguistics. She had a very easy time at the university-she did not have to work too hard to get good grades, so that confirmed for her that she was on the right path. Upon graduation, her mother, because of her connections, helped her to get a great teaching job, and at age 25 she was on the tenure track. Teaching at a Russian college was always fun and easy for Holt, and it paid well. She knew she was successful because her students referred their friends and family to her, and she was always busy and could pick and choose when she worked or whom she accepted as a student. She believes her parents must have seen this in her early on and directed her in the career path of teaching because they thought it would match her personality and ability. However, there was a long break in her teaching career during her move from Russia to the UK and later to California. At first, she stayed at home full-time for three years with her baby. After she realized she could no longer just sit at home, shop, cook, and hang out with other stay-at-home moms, she decided to try something different, just to see if there was anything else she would be good at. She had a variety of jobs: running her own coffee shop, managing a doctor’s office, selling chemical and plumbing supplies, training and supervising sales people and working for United Airlines as a gate agent at LAX. Simultaneously, she was working on her MBA at Woodbury University in Burbank and tutoring students in writing at Los Angeles Mission College. Upon graduation, she was planning to work in marketing for a biomedical company in northern California, but while she was waiting for her offer to come through, she was offered a teaching job at Mission. She had to make a decision within one day and start teaching three days later. She is glad now that she said yes to that unexpected opportunity, because once she found herself in front of the class, interacting with students, she knew that teaching had been her true calling all along. She felt energized in the classroom, explaining and teaching. “Time flowed so fast!” she said. She felt accomplished and valued and she enjoyed sharing her ideas and experience with them. Taking a few years off doing other things and learning different skills just confirmed that teaching really is what Holt does best, she said. Although she is qualified to teach all levels of ESL and business management, she feels that her current classes, business English and Microsoft Office 2007, match her skills, experience and ability best. That said, her doctoral research was on emotional intelligence and how it relates to college success. She likes to design and implement new curricula and her most recent invention is a class on emotional intelligence and efficiency in the workplace. She got her doctorate in education from Pepperdine University.