Mashuda E.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Mashuda, an English and Early Years/Primary specialist with over 10 years of teaching experience across South Africa and Southeast Asia. I hold a Master's in Education, a TEFL certificate, and have taught learners from age five right through to university level. I believe lessons should feel like an adventure, not a lecture. I bring games, colour-coded visual tools, storytelling, and interactive digital activities into every class, and I love watching a learner's confidence grow as they realize they can do something they didn't think they could a week before. Patient, structured, and genuinely enthusiastic, I aim to make every lesson feel personal, fun, and worth showing up for.

Teaching experience

I'm currently a Primary ESL Teacher and English Specialist in Brunei Darussalam, teaching within the Cambridge curriculum from Preschool through Year 2. I lead school-wide literacy initiatives, mentor newly arrived teachers, and deliver professional development on dialogic teaching and sentence-level language strategies. One achievement I'm especially proud of: I designed a color-coded "Steps to Success" framework that helped my Year 2 students independently structure and improve their creative writing. This framework guided my students in writing diary entries, letters of apology and advertisements so that they can build real ownership over their own writing. Before Brunei, I spent five years in South African higher education, including as Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at STADIO, where I coordinated the university's largest module, and as a lecturer at the University of Pretoria, teaching cohorts of 150–200 students and contributing to a UN-funded national project professionalizing early childhood education across South Africa. My foundation as a classroom teacher runs deep too. I taught for 6 years across three South African primary schools, teaching English Home Language, Mathematics, and Life Skills, and serving as Subject Head for Life Skills along the way. I hold a Master of Education, two Bachelor of Education degrees (both Cum Laude), and a TEFL/TESOL certificate.

Teaching specialties