President's
Message

Message from the President

January 2009

Dear TEFL Grads and Friends,

As I write you in this New Year of 2009, I look back with thoughts of fondness and gratitude
for nearly nine years and 1200 participants in
our TEFL Certificate Program.

This past year has been a time of success, accomplishment and expansion for The Boston Language Institute. All of our programs are growing, some breaking records, despite the economic crisis. We have just completed a six-week Chinese and Farsi program for the Navy,
a result of the highly successful Arabic program we did for the Army three years ago.

In the past year and a half, we have received
a great deal of national and local press. The Institute has been featured in USA Today, the Boston Globe and Channel 7 News, the local NBC affiliate.  This past September, the TEFL Certificate Program itself was the subject of the second Wall Street Journal article in a year featuring The Boston Language Institute. The article concerns members of the fifty-and-over set using an English teacher training program as a means of funding extended vacations and even retirement abroad. The article prominently features our TEFL Certificate Program, calling it “one of the better known programs in the country.”

Tellingly, Journal writer Scott Schmedel interviewed about 15 of our graduates along with graduates of four other U.S.-based programs. He only included ours in the article, however, because he found them “consistently more interesting,” he said on the phone, than those of the other programs. A more sophisticated clientele is consistently drawn to a higher quality program; the writer’s observation, therefore, is a flattering and powerful testimonial to the special caliber of The Boston Language Institute…and to each of you who chose to take our program. 

I believe that The Boston Language Institute’s blessings are born of our commitment to serve and support all those who come to us in these challenging times and at all times.  I have learned over the years – I celebrated my 60th birthday only last month – that prosperity is a spiritual phenomenon whose two major building blocks are service and gratitude -- service to all in all that you do, gratitude to all in all that you do.

In this promising New Year, I would like to express the gratitude of all of us at The Boston Language Institute for each and every one of you and your contribution to our success. We hope to have played a role in your success as well and stand ready to serve you now and in the future.

Please share with us how and what you are doing.  If you are not teaching English or a foreign language, please let us know what you are doing and how, if at all, the TEFL Certificate Program influences your work.  Send us pictures and stories of you, your students and/or your activities wherever you are in the world.  We’ll include your pictures in our next newsletter and one of the photos will be selected for the Michail Mayzelis Photo Award, a $50 gift certificate to bostonlanguage.com/bookstore. As you may recall, the award is named in honor of a Russian practice student who passed away in 2003.

May God bless you and your loved ones. May you always realize how very blessed you are.  

Siri Karm Singh Khalsa
President
(sirikarm@bostonlanguage.com)

President's
Message