Kate Hardin

Kate Hardin is a doctoral student at McGill University, where she studies the language learning strategies of adults with limited formal education. Originally, she planned to become a German teacher, and her first language teaching experience was during her undergraduate program in German. After that, she became a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at a university in northwestern Russia. She credits these experiences with developing her ability to improvise a lesson on 8 minutes' notice with nothing but a quarter of a piece of chalk, as well as her deep commitment to tea-and-chocolate breaks in between classes.

Kate holds an MA in linguistics from Die Freie Universität in Berlin, where she studied European languages, multilingualism studies, and language education policy. She is particularly interested in translanguaging pedagogy and the dynamics of linguistically diverse communities. She also loves teaching academic skills and helping her students to discover that they are always capable of more than they think. Because of this, she particularly enjoys working with older learners and first-time school-goers.