Marisha Theeboom is an experienced, trained Mandarin teacher and volunteer community worker who since 1987 has worked across ages, cultures and continents whilst involved with a large charitable organisation that spans Taiwan, America and South Africa. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree from University of Cape Town, R.S.A., 1996. She has attended several professional development in Australia since 2006 from RMIT & Chinese teachers professional development courses.
She married an Australian and migrated to Melbourne, has three daughters age 9,7, and 2. As a migrant herself, she has come to be aware of the difficulties involved in settling in well within the local community. Thus she has turned her love of teaching and community work into establishing Kimmba Bilingual Learning Playgroup Inc. for migrants and local residents to be able to gather together and understand each other through a fun and loving playgroup environment. In doing so, she hopes the establishment of Kimmba Bilingual Learning Playgroup enables more migrants from different cultures to benefit by retaining their self-identity and at the same time develop proficiency in English language skills.
As the founder of Jo Jo Bilingual Education Program and organiser of the Kimmba Bilingual Learning Playgroup Inc. committee, Marisha has demonstrated her sound knowledge as a teacher and a trained community worker in organisation, co-ordination and liaison skills. With her specialty as a language teacher for young children and as a mother of three young daughters, she knows how to encourage little wondering minds to settle in and gain the best understanding from each language session. Most importantly, Marisha knows how to have great fun with children while helping them learn a second language through the loving and caring environment that the Kimmba Bilingual Learning Playgroup Inc. Committee has put so much time and effort into creating for our young learners.
Under her leadership, Kimmba Bilingual Learning Playgroup has moved to the next phase of incorporating bilingual learning into the early learning and kindergarten program in 2010. Marisha is looking forward to the establishment of Melbourne's very first multilingual Early Learning Centre in the near future.
Maritta is our second longest serving teacher in Kimmba. She has been teaching with us since January 2008. Maritta did her training to work with children from 0-18 years at the "Fachschule fuer Sozialpaedagogik" in Freiburg/Breisgau in Germany. This qualification allowed her to work as a kindergarten teacher, and as a social worker in children homes. She finished this training in 1979 and had first worked in a home for children in Heidelberg, Germany. After a break from work and traveling extensively through Africa, she ran a Kindergarten in the Black Forrest, Germany. After arriving in Australia, she opened up a private bilingual Kindergarten in Melbourne in 1984. Maritta also taught German on Saturday mornings to preschoolers, and was involved with bilingual language studies at Monash University. She closed the Kindergarten when her family decided to move further out of the city. She ran the Kindergarten program in a Long Day Care Centre for 3 years. In 2000 she started the Out of School Hour Care program in Kangaroo Ground, where she is currently working. In 2005/2006 she completed a Diploma in Family studies. Maritta has four children aged 10 to 26.
Ivette originally from Venezuela, which is a country situated at the North of South America. Well, if you watched the movie UP, then you already know a part of it called “The Angel Fall”.
Ivette graduated in Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas city, 2002 and obtained a Degree in Preschool Education, which had been assessed by Early Childhood Australia and she has been working with children from 0 to 7 years old for more than seven years in Venezuela. Ivette is enjoying the experience of teaching Spanish to children of different cultures in Kimmba Bilingual Learning because, as a preschool teacher she values the importance of bringing confidence to young children in a bilingual early learning environment. She recognises that the first stage of the children’s lives are crucial for their integral development, thus in Kimmba she would like to offer the opportunity of helping to strengthen children’s social behaviour, encourage their skills at expressing their emotional needs and build up their language acquisition and experiences by facilitating the learning of Spanish with fun activities. As a good Latin girl, Ivette loves dancing and dancing activity is a part of our unique Spanish learning classes for young children. Her favour rhythms are flamenco, belly dance and all kind of latin music.
Icho has worked as a kindergarten teacher since graduating from East China Normal University, Shanghai in 2000. During that time she excelled herself winning many prizes with her demonstrated skills in teaching and storytelling for young children. While worked as a kindergarten teacher in Shanghai, Icho researched and implemented a program aimed at developing multiple intelligences based on early reading. She presented her findings on this project at the Chinese Showcase in Education Exhibition in 2008.
While in China, Icho also conducted teaching demonstrations both in Shanghai and provincial city education exhibitions. She has developed excellent systems to communicate with parents about their children's development. She always uses a variety of teaching methods to bring out the best in her students. You will be bowled over by Icho's passion for teaching and ability to step into the shoes of her students, enabling her to bring magic and joy into your child's language learning.
Icho is currently studying Children's Service Certificate III with Box Hill Tafe and will be graduating in October, 2010. She is looking forward to gain some local experience by working with Kimmba children and share her great passion learning /teaching children here at Kimmba.
Wee Yi comes from Malaysia. Having completed her Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Journalism and Public Relations in Curtin University of Western Australia in 2006, she is now undertaking Master of Teaching (Early Childhood) at The University of Melbourne. Wee Yi has been living in Australia for five years. She is a native Mandarin speaker and is fluent in English due to Malaysian’s bilingual school education system. Wee Yi can also speak Cantonese, and Malay.
Before joining Kimmba, she has had several placement experiences of working with children in Victoria Kindergartens and she also taught English to adults in Melbourne. Her passions for assisting children to learn another language has brought her here at Kimmba.
Wee Yi strongly believes that, children learn best in a professionally designed, motivated and relax learning environment, where all children’s needs and interests are met. This is what she finds from Kimmba’s philosophy and excellent professional language teaching training that’s offered to teachers. She believes that with her qualifications and experiences, children at Kimmba are well supported in their early language learning journeys.
Wei Yan’s domain expertise is in the area of languages. Born in China, Wei Yan is a native Chinese speaker and holds a Bachelor of Finance degree (University of Commerce, Harbin, China) in 2004. Besides learning English as a second language, Wei Yan attended the Herder Institute at University of Leipzig in Germany for one year to study continuously German as a third language, and attended Business Administration classes at University of Leipzig for another two more years. Wei Yan speaks German fluently as a native German speaker.
Gaining first experience in child care and child education together with a day nanny job in Germany, Wei Yan is happy to advance her skills in early childhood education. Wei Yan currently attends Gowrie Victoria to graduate with Certificate III in children services, July, 2011.
Wei Yan is fully supportive of Kimmba Bilingual Learning’s multi lingual concept. She is highly motivated to pass the happiness of learning multiple languages to young children in Kimmba’s play based, structured learning environment. She is raising a son to be trilingual with her German husband in Melbourne and has attends our German playgroup since July, 2009. She will be spending her time to assist both our Mandarin kindergarten teacher and German room leader throughout the week at our ELC.
She is looking forward to meet with all our Kimmba bilingual children once our ELC starts.
Iris holds her Bachelor of Art in Chinese Language and Literature from Yunnan Normal University in China, 2005. She has professional knowledge of teaching both verbal and written Chinese and has experience in teaching Chinese to secondary students in China.
With great passion for teaching, especially for bilingual education, she is doing Master of teaching (Primary) in Melbourne University and she will be graduating in Dec 2011. Her professional placement includes early years’ education for preps. She has always been developing close rapport with her students. She is an engaging teacher who brings her prior experiences into early childhood education and loves working with children.
Iris believes that each child will be a successful learner in Kimmba with best commitment by the teachers, parents, and children.
