Lev (Leo) Chesnov is from Moscow, Russia. He has a degree in cinematography and spent many years working in the Russian film industry. When his teacher, Cindy, gave his class an assignment to create a presentation about how to make their favorite food, Leo decided to draw on his cinematography background to create a video presentation about borscht, a traditional Russian beet soup. The video is informative and entertaining, and the soup looks really enticing. Good job, Leo!

After 20 years working at various LSI schools, David Hughes is now reaching the end of his last week as the school director for LSI New York. Whilst it will be hard for LSI to see him go, we wish him all the best for his exciting new plans for the future. Here David tells us a little more about the wonderful years he has spent at LSI.

“How long do you think you will stay at your next job? A year, three years? More? Well, when I started teaching at LSI Vancouver twenty years ago, I thought I would stay for a little while and then move on. After all, I had never lived in the same house for more than three years, and I’d just come back to Canada after five years of teaching English in Tokyo, Tunis and Barcelona. Vancouver was nice, but I didn’t expect to be there for very long. And I was right. Less than two years later, I agreed to move out to Toronto to open LSI’s second Canadian school. The plan was to supervise that project, hire teachers and staff, then hire a permanent Director and come back to Vancouver after about six months… HA!!”

“A year went by. I assembled every kind of school furniture you can imagine, hired a group of teachers and staff that are still among my good friends, typed invoices, responded to faxes and sent confirmations by Canada post. We leased more space in the building. Three years went by. I assembled more desks. I bought a Compaq computer for $1200 and Microsoft Office (for $200 or something). I still typed invoices every Friday, but there were rumors of a computer system that would make my Smith-Corona redundant. Once, I rented walls to make additional classrooms in the empty suite next door. We had picnics on Toronto Island in the summer and rented a church refectory for Christmas dinner. We took dozens of students to Niagara Falls, up the CN Tower, and to Canada’s Wonderland. We even went skiing in winter until a Brazilian student stepped into his bindings, went backwards through the shop, zipped across the parking lot, over a snow bank and into a tree. Not bad, considering he was registered blind!”

“And so it went on for five or six years. Toronto was growing, the school was doing well. And when the chance came to buy a small building in Rosedale, LSI took it. Busy summer! Two locations, lots of students. More picnics on the island, but fewer nights playing pool at the Pilot. Every day I jumped on the streetcar, rolled past Kensington Market and the University of Toronto. Our teachers were great, the folks in the office really knew what they were doing, and the students were determined to keep things interesting. They studied hard, sure, but they also started a fire in the student lounge, bought old cars and drove to Vancouver, played guitars downstairs, walked to Downsview Park to see the Pope and almost won the first ever Toronto ESL idol contest!”

“And then I heard that Rosemary, the Director in LSI New York, was retiring and that old rambling feeling was awakened. I talked about it with my girlfriend. We decided it was worth a try. She’s a visual artist, and a wanderer, too. I asked , and LSI said yes. In December of 2008, I said goodbye to the best group of friends I’d ever had and headed off to the Big Apple, to a house in Queens with a crazy roommate. A year later, Sherri and I got married – in Las Vegas, by Elvis – and she and the cats bundled down from Toronto. No more interrogations at the border for her! Finally, we moved to Bed-Stuy, in Brooklyn – Jay-Z, Chris Rock, Norah Jones and Mike Tyson all lived there when they were kids. Then it was a no-go neighborhood but things have changed here so much. And all for the better.”

“LSI New York is a great school. It’s got that LSI family feel and the students are extremely cool (of course). We have some good things going with the Metropolitan College of New York, including taking a group of their MBA students to LSI Zurich and London as part of a case study. Every year some of our students enroll there and there’s an international student association coming soon. New Yorkers are a nice bunch of people as long as you don’t waste their time. And everywhere you go, you feel like you’re in a movie.”

“But that spell of staying has been broken and I decide that changing cities isn’t enough. I have been studying for a Masters in Non-Profit Management offered by the New School University and I’m just about to finish my first semester but come the Fall I want to go full-time. Hence my decision to say a sad farewell to LSI.”

“So that’s where I’m at. This is my last week at LSI. After twenty years. Who knew? All the best to everyone I have worked with both students and staff.”

And all the best to you David from all of LSI. Thanks for everything!

In spite of her diminutive size Ms. Kubota is a force to be reckoned with! Since her arrival here on March 1^st, 2011, Ms. Kubota has become an integral part of the staff and wears many caps in the office:  at times receptionist, bulletin board art director, master office clerk, LSI NY Facebook page administrator, new student orientation guide and slang-of-the-week curator, Ms. Kubota is not one to shy away from a new challenge.

Currently 22 years old, Ms. Kubota will be a senior when she returns to Tokyo University of Foreign Studies where she is majoring in Spanish and Gender Studies. Upon completion of her studies, Ms. Kubota hopes to work for a NGO in the field of education, specifically in the developing world. Ms. Kubota is fluent in English, having spent six years of her childhood in Los Angeles, USA, where her father was transferred for work. 

Ms. Kubota says she is grateful for the experience of interning here at LSI New York. “So far it’s been wonderful! One good thing about working in a language school is that I can meet students from many countries.”  Ms. Kubota says she is learning valuable skills on the job, such as learning how to answer the phone and respond to students’ questions in English. She also feels much more confident now when it comes to speaking in public: every Monday, Ms. Kubota is in charge of introducing the school’s activities calendar to the new students at orientation.

Ms. Kubota also shared her insights about some of the differences between the workplace here in the USA and in Japan. “At my last job in Japan–a “cram” school where high school students are prepared for high school exams—the staff did everything together. There weren’t specific tasks for each worker, whereas here in the US, everyone has a clearly defined position. Because of this, in Japan people may take less responsibly for their work since everyone shares in each other’s mistakes.”

Ms. Kubota says she enjoys living in New York City but misses Tokyo. She misses her family the most but also the clean and quiet underground service. Overall, Ms. Kubota is very satisfied with her experience here so far and will miss the camaraderie in the office of LSI NY. “I’m having so much fun here and I recommend this experience for any intern from abroad.”

We wish Ms. Kubota the best of luck and hope she will not forget her family here at LSI New York when she returns to Japan in early December!  Genkidene,Mai!

For the past three weeks LSI New York have had the pleasure of hosting Tammy Campos Di Calafiori as a student at the school.  The NY Director of studies, Kerry Linder, managed to catch up with this accomplished young actress from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil after one of the afternoon classes and took the opportunity to find out more about this famous actress …

In her native country, Tammy is best known as “Lorena,” one of the stars of the daytime “novela” Passione. In this popular soap opera, Tammy is part of a love triangle involving her mother and her mother’s boyfriend! Here she is in action.   Recently, Tammy also played the role in the feature film A Suprema Felicidade by acclaimed director/screenwriter Arnaldo Jabor; in this period film, Tammy takes on the part of an ingénue stripper, a role she told me she thoroughly enjoyed researching and playing.

In spite of her star quality, intrinsic beauty and accomplishments at such a young age, Tammy is surprisingly down to earth and friendly, and comes to us after having completed an acting course combining the Suzuki Method and Viewpoints, at SITI Company in NYC. Like Tammy, a growing number of young creative professionals attending LSI New York are choosing to combine an intensive language program with specialized study in their field here in NYC, be it in acting, photography, dance, or some other artistic discipline.

Tammy, whose course is being sponsored by our partner in Brazil SIS Intercâmbio, says she enjoys taking the subway and walking in New York without being recognized. Regarding her courses here at LSI, Tammy says she is very satisfied and plans to extend her course and return to LSI New York at a later date. “I like studying here because I can make friends from all over the world and I get a lot of practice. I really like this school and I think the teachers and methodology are very good. My teacher Anna is great! This week for class, we had to research a famous person and give a presentation to the rest of class. I did a presentation on the artist Jackson Pollock; next time I am thinking of doing a presentation on my city, Rio de Janeiro!”

No doubt we will be hearing a lot more about this talented young actress in the years to come. We certainly look forward to hosting her when she is back in NYC. In the mean time, we wish Tammy boa sorte which means “good luck” in her native Portuguese!

Based at the Manhattan Campus of the Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY) , LSI New York has over many years established a mutually beneficial relationship with MCNY. Indeed, LSI New York offers one of the designated ESL programs  permitting international students to follow on their LSI language courses by studying  a huge array of degree courses at MCNY.

Due to this tradition of close cooperation between  (MCNY) and LSI New York, LSI was only too happy to help out when approached by a group of MBA students asking to use LSI as a case study for their MBA program. These 25 students set out to focus on three main strands of the LSI business: Finance, Media Management and General adminstration. Initially meeting were held with the Director and staff at LSI New York but then spread out to include seminars and discussions with many of the top LSI management, LSI marketing , and culminated in a two-week trip to Europe visiting our schools in London and Zurich. The intention for this first phase of the project is to produce some recommendations for LSI as to how we can further improve our business. We look forward to hearing what they have to say!