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From Teaching in Tonga to TESOL

Soraya Bilbao ’94, M’03, M’14 appends her email messages with a quote from American philosopher and psychologist William James: “Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.”

This fundamental tenet — that even our seemingly smallest actions can have a tremendous impact on the world around us — has guided her through her educational pursuits and career. “What I value most about my �Ӱ�ԭ�� education has always been the emphasis on service to others,” she said. “It rang true to my own beliefs and nurtured that part of me.”

A “triple Stag,” Bilbao holds three degrees from �Ӱ�ԭ�� University: a bachelor’s degree in marketing, a master’s degree in industrial and operational psychology, and a second master’s in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).

After completing her undergraduate studies in 1994, the marketing major with a minor in communication was offered a job at the first AmeriCorps office in Connecticut. The nonprofit organization, created as the result of the 1993 National and Community Service Trust Act, helps communities around the country address poverty and improve education in underserved areas.

“That began my years of working in the Bridgeport area in youth development and training,” she said.

While at AmeriCorps, Bilbao pursued her first master’s degree, focusing on the psychology of business management and acquiring valuable skills, such as how to establish a training program and “learning how everything was connected.”

After her second Commencement ceremony in Stag Country, Bilbao fulfilled a dream she’d harbored since her under graduate days. “I thought, I better try for the Peace Corps now; I will regret it later if I don’t,” she said. “So, I signed up, quit my job, and sold my car.”

In 2005, the Peace Corps assigned her to teach English in the Kingdom of Tonga, a nation of 100,000 people and 171 islands – 40 of them inhabited – scattered across 270,000 square miles of the southwestern Pacific Ocean.

“I told them that they could send me wherever they wished, but when they mentioned that I could be teaching young people in Tonga, I knew that was the Peace Corps experience I wanted,” Bilbao noted. “I wanted to challenge myself, but I also wanted to help others.”

Once she was sufficiently tutored in the basics of the official Tongan language, Bilbao was sent to one of Tonga’s outer islands, a half-hour fishing boat ride from the main island of Tongatapu, on which the capital city of Nuku‘alofa is located.

“There were about 100 people on the island, which had no cars, no roads, just dirt paths and a couple of bicycles,” she recalled. But even with a limited ability to communicate in the Tongan language, “a family on the island took me in and treated me like one of their daughters.”

Despite the remote location and occasional bouts of homesickness for her own family in Stamford, Connecticut, Bilbao thrived in her two-year role as a teacher of English to young Tongans. In fact, she opted to extend her term for a third year, during which she trained new Peace Corps arrivals and taught English at the high school on the main island of Tongatapu.

Her Peace Corps experience inspired her career trajectory once she returned to the States, and eventually nudged her back to Stag Country to earn a second master’s degree – this one preparing her to become a full-time teacher of English to speakers of other languages in Connecticut. Mentored by Anne Campbell, PhD, associate professor and director of �Ӱ�ԭ��’s TESOL, World Languages and Bilingual programs, she received her second master’s degree in 2014.

Named Danbury Public School’s Teacher of the Year in 2020-21, Bilbao is now entering her 11th year leading the ESL (English as a Second Language) program at Danbury High School. She credits her success in the classroom not only to her Peace Corps experience and her varied roles with AmeriCorps, but also her own international background — she was born in the U.S. but moved to her parents’ native country of Ecuador when she was two. Her family returned and settled in Stamford when she was eight years old, and that’s when she learned English — an experience that informs her approach to teaching today.

“Prior to the Peace Corps, I had never considered becoming a teacher,” Bilbao said in a 2013 promotional video for �Ӱ�ԭ��’s TESOL program. “I just really wanted to work with students who are coming from other cultures and provide them with the knowledge, as much as I can, and the support to integrate and get to know the new culture they’re in.”

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