Heather Pruessing

Heather Pruessing

Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben (Lecturer for American Cultural History)

GWZ
Beethovenstraße 15, Room 3.5.01
04107 Leipzig

Telephone: +49 341 973 7336

The Long and Short of It

My roots are in New Jersey, USA: home of Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, 24-hour-dinners, and the best bagels money can buy. After graduating high school, I packed my bags and headed south to North Carolina to attend Davidson College (A school so tough, future president, Woodrow Wilson, couldn’t make it past his freshman year). Through a Davidson exchange with the University of Würzburg, I got my first taste of living abroad in Germany, and in a surprising turn of events, fell so in love with the country and the language that I threw out my original major (Music) and graduated with a BA in German Studies instead.

In 2006, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship that took me to Mittweida, Germany, where I happily spent the year teaching English, researching German Poetry, and perfecting my Sächsisch. Later that year, I was inspired to bring my academic interests full circle and enrolled in the American Studies program at the University of Leipzig. Upon completing my MA, I moved into the private education sector, where I worked as an English trainer, a company recruiter, a TÜV-specialist, a curriculum developer, a teacher-trainer, and a school assistant director.

In the private sector, my positions were multifaceted and afforded me extensive training, certification and practical experience in the field of English pedagogy. I taught a wide variety of courses spanning large group classes in technical English for gas-production engineers to one-on-one coaching in English negotiations for DAX company managers. Stretching from telecommunications to steel production, I was able to teach and coach students from a large cross section of Saxon-industry. I now funnel these experiences and skills into my courses at ASL.

Many of the community service projects that I am most passionate about focus on education. Particularly in cooperation  with the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut Sachsen, I work extensively to support and provide further training for English teachers in Saxony, Thuringia, and Saxony-Anhalt.