Hi! I’m Bryn, and I put together the content on this website to help other families teach their children German wherever they might live. Here’s a little about me and my motivation for putting this guide together.
I’m a fluent non-native speaker of German. I started learning German in the fifth grade. It was my worst and least favorite subject all through school. Wanting to finally achieve fluency, I decided to go on Smith College’s junior year abroad program in Hamburg. Luckily for me, it was an amazing program with innovative wraparound support, including tutoring and an accent coach. With this support and the benefit of being in-country, my natural intrinsic motivation drove me to advance quickly, moving from an A2 (advanced beginner) level to B2 (upper intermediate) level within a few months. After a decade of struggling, I was surprised to see that I actually had a natural talent for German. I achieved C2-level competency in a few years and went on to complete a PhD in German Literature at Yale University, where I also taught college and graduate level German classes for five years.
After Yale, I worked in various roles related to translation publishing, curriculum design, and then for 10 years, as a product manager on products that leveraged AI, computer vision, machine learning, and other prediction modeling techniques. When I became a parent, all the different approaches to learning and teaching that I had gathered through my varied career gave me a unique perspective on teaching my son a second language. I dove deep into all the methods we can use to help our children learn languages, from different parenting approaches (OPOL, inside/outside, etc.) to ways to access media to support our children’s learning journeys.
