Hi, welcome to our site. My name is Jay Graham and I am a Canadian and Australian citizen and I have spent the last 15 years traveling and working outside of my home country. I was born in Vancouver, Canada but now call Melbourne, Australia home. After a few years of traveling, in 1997 I decided on Indonesia to work and accepted a job as an ESL teacher. After a year, I went to Cancun, Mexico to teach ESL at Cancun Institute of Technology. However, the school's ESL programme soon went bankrupt and I returned to Indonesia. It was there that I met my wife Susi and were married in 2000 and now we have 2 children - Indira who is 6 years old and Saphira who is 2 years old.
I met my wife Susi in Central Java while working in Indonesia in 1998 and it was there where I fell in love with my wife and the Indonesian culture. We were married in a traditional (3 day) Javanese wedding ceremony - with 1000 guests, a typical number- and I had to change wedding costumes 4 times. It was an interesting experience. Soon after, we found ourselves traveling Asia and loving it. We finally settled in Bali where my wife taught ESL and I taught IELTS preparation for an AUSAID funded school. We have lived in Perth, Melbourne and Indonesia (again) and finally Melbourne (again). We love travelling, doing anything fitness related and experiencing different cultures.
Prior to entering the teaching profession, I worked part time for an Infrastructure Maintenance Research and Development firm in Vancouver in various roles while attending university. About 2 and a half years ago I returned to the engineering profession in Melbourne to undertake new challenges in project management in the rail infrastructure team in bid and tender management. However , after realising that teaching was really my calling, I left Australia to return to Indonesia as a Grade 1 teacher at Bandung International School, an IBO school, in West Java.
By far the most challenging time in my teaching career was when I was employed as a LOTE teacher in a Perth high school. The previous teacher had resigned due to unfavorable circumstances that were occurring in the class and I took over all of the Year 8, 9 and 10 Indonesian language classes. It was a tough task, however in the end I managed to turn the LOTE programme around in only 3 months and student enrollment for Year 8's enrolling into Year 9 LOTE Indonesian went from 0 to 30. This was also one of my highlights as a teacher.
In my spare time I enjoy golfing (badly), running (slowly) and playing tennis and other sports and spending time with my family. I have recently completed my Certificate III in Fitness with FIA to become a certified fitness instructor.
If you wish to access the Our Portfolios section, please email me as it is password protected.
Regards
Jay, Susi, Indira and Saphira