About me

Ko Takitimu te maunga. Ko Aparima te awa. Nō Waihopai ahau. Ko Tracy tōku ingoa.

I’m Tracy, and I come from Waihopai/Invercargill in the deep south of Aotearoa New Zealand. I have also lived in Central Otago, Timaru, and Ōtautahi/Christchurch. I studied economics briefly at university before realising it wasn’t for me, then worked in various offices before my husband and I moved to California, where I studied antholopology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

We returned to Aotearoa to have children, and there I graduated with a bachelor of teaching and learning, working first as a relief teacher while my children were small, and then full-time teaching new entrants and years 1-2 in an amazing little school which was demolished after the Christchurch quakes and ministerial reshuffling.

Around then my family moved again to Zurich, Switzerland. We’ve been here now for eleven years. I took a break from teaching, thinking I was done…until I realised I missed teaching far too much! Rather than return to the classroom, though, I made my own path, starting a business first as an EAL tutor before realising I needed more of a challenge and pivoting into a literacy specialisation.

I founded Language Plus in 2017, sharing a tiny rented space with a friend (she got mornings, I got afternoons) and then moving into a larger space after two years. I teach after-school workshops with small groups of learners from five to 12 years old, exploring word-building, reading, and writing together. Many students have come and gone as they move from country to country, but they all bring their unique experiences, ideas, and perspectives to my classroom.

The biggest benefit they bring is their linguistic background. I teach learners from Poland, Russia, England, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Romania, Germany, Spain, Korea, France, Nigeria, and Switzerland. We frequently find ways to make connections between the word patterns we are learning in English and the languages they speak at home and at school. The family tree of languages is a common topic in my classroom!

As a result I have developed a deep love of etymology (where words come from) and morphology (what the individual parts of words mean), and I’ve found that bringing these into the classroom has helped learners explore words on a new level, and to understand new words more quickly.

I’m here to share what I’ve learned, especially about morphology and why English spelling is the way it is. It may seem confusing and meaningless, but I promise that once you understand the “why” of spelling, it will be a lot easier to teach to your learners!