News Archives: GPRC Alumna's love for Languages keeps her coming back
Friday, December 6th, 2019
GPRC alumna, Alina Ovsiy.
Growing up besieged with shyness, Alina Ovsiy was the kind of child who sat at the back of the class and never put her hand up. Thanks to a love of languages that forced her out of her shell, today Ovsiy is not only an accomplished polyglot but also a much-loved teacher of multiple languages.
Almost immediately after earning a Bachelor of Education degree through the TEN program, the GPRC alumna was snapped up by Peace Wapiti Academy, who offered her a permanent teaching position. By day Ovsiy teaches French, Russian, and American Sign Language (ASL) to grade 11 and 12 students – but by night, as of this fall, she’s back at GPRC, determined to brush up her French skills through advanced classes in translation.
“I'm teaching French 30 this year and I feel that it's not fair for me to ask more from my kids than I can do myself,” says Ovsiy. “Professional development has to come from both sides, so I want to improve my French at the same time as I'm teaching it.”
At the age of 18, Ovsiy and her family moved from the Ukraine to Grande Prairie, where she had to navigate both life in a new country as well as a new language. “When you learn other languages, you actually have to speak to people, and it is so difficult to do that when you know they can hear all of your mistakes.
“But it also teaches you an invaluable life lesson that if you're not going to put yourself out there, other people will not notice you. If I didn't learn languages, I would never end up in this line of work. And I would never have learned French if I didn't do this in English first.”
As a teacher, Ovsiy has seen first-hand how learning a language can develop empathy in students, in addition to a newfound appreciation for the immigrant experience.
“Once you’ve struggled with learning a language, you recognize all these people who have moved here from other countries, and how much they struggle and try their best. My students have become much more cooler with the idea that, ‘Hey, maybe I should know a few phrases here and there,’ and they became more open-minded,” she says.
“A lot of people think language classes are easy and it's true at the beginner stage, but once they go up to intermediate and advanced levels they're like, ‘I have no clue what I'm doing and I don't understand these sentence structures.’
“If you don't practice it, you're not going to get it. You might not use all these grammatical structures in everyday life, but you still need to know them in order to deliver your message more precisely.”
Since graduating from GPRC, Ovsiy has been learning American Sign Language, with the goal of teaching it to her students. “My principal said they would pay for all my professional development if I wanted to teach it. So I took an online course, followed by an immersion course in Edmonton where all the instructors were deaf or hard of hearing. And it was hard. But I’m ok with struggling.” She is currently taking classes with a Peace Country ASL Club.
What makes it all so gratifying, says Ovsiy, is working at a job she loves in a community where she knows many people. “When I first came here, I wanted to move to Edmonton. Compared to the capital of Ukraine where I lived before, Grande Prairie was a really small city. However, “as time progressed I was like, I'm done moving. I like this. I like that I have built relationships with people and made professional connections. What you realize in the end is that you bring your life wherever you go, and you make a life wherever you live."
