KIPP Philly educator spent summer teaching in Thailand
In addition to the professional development opportunities that KIPP Philadelphia Public Schools (KPPS) offers teachers and staff, we also encourage all employees to explore professional development opportunities outside of the KIPP network that interest them. We know that excellent educators stay engaged through opportunities to learn and grow, and we also know that there are many resources beyond those we offer. Our hope is to give educators the space to explore what interests them, because we know what they learn from these opportunities will benefit our students in the classroom.
This summer, Ms. Simfoni Nibbs left her KIPP North Philadelphia Academy (KNPA) community and the City of Brotherly Love to teach English as a foreign language to students in Thailand. She embarked on the journey to develop and flourish as an educator. She says she always wanted to teach abroad and chose Thailand because she had never been to Asia.
The four-week intensive course taught her how to teach English to students of all ages. One of her favorite lessons was teaching active voice vs passive voice to teenagers. Ms. Nibbs says the experience helped her gain a better understanding of American grammar, as well as how children react to things they do not understand. She says teaching with a language barrier taught her “how to ramble less and teach more with your body language.”
Ms. Nibbs joined KPPS in 2018 as a Liberty Teaching Fellow, teaching kindergarten at KNPA, and she is now a Lead Kindergarten teacher. She says her team at KNPA is “super close knit. As the school grows, I hope we can keep our close-knit culture.” Ms. Nibbs was born and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She went to Lincoln University and graduated with a degree in Spanish.
