Nadine Elhaj - Intro

Hello, this is Nadine. Just wanted to share some highlights. I was born in Beirut, Lebanon and came to California when I was three years old. Between the ages of three and eleven, my family traveled back and forth between our home base in California and Algeria, Kuwait, and Greece. I attended American schools abroad so that my education would be cohesive when I got back. I finished junior high (Sandburg), high school (Glendora HS), and community college (Citrus) in the city of Glendora. I then attended Cal Poly Pomona to begin my B.A. in English and ended up finishing it at Cal State Fullerton. Upon graduation, I applied and was immediately hired as an elementary school teacher. The first year, I bounced from second grade to first grade to kindergarten. I stayed in kindergarten for the remainder of my elementary school teaching career. This included teaching at a regular public school and later a brand new charter school. I taught in the day and went to Cal Poly Pomona at night to fulfill my obligation of taking classes towards obtaining my multiple subjects teaching credential. After three years of teaching, I entered the administrative world as an executive assistant in various settings including Citrus College, USC, Green Dot Corporation, and Panda Restaurant Group. While at Citrus, I worked as an executive assistant by day and a Citrus ESL teacher by night; while at USC, I worked as an executive assistant by day (did it again!) and a PUENTE Learning Center ESL teacher by night. During this time period I also owned four rental properties. When the market went haywire, I had to let them go. But it was a valuable learning experience and I now know what to do and what not to do the next time. I am back in education, teaching at Citrus and assisting at Mt. SAC in the ESL programs. I am also completing my Master's in Educational Multimedia.

I have grown to absolutely love and adore technology. Gadgets, gizmos, timesavers and streamliners capture my attention and enthusiasm. I am in awe of Silicon Valley young bucks (many who are actually college drop outs LOL) who have seemingly become overnight sensations with their ingenious inventions. I recently had my ESL class add a translation app to their phones so that they can continue learning at home. I want to introduce my students to all kinds of technology that will help them to improve the quality of their lives.

I dream of creating a mobile app or game that will fill a need and take the world by storm. And in the process make me an overnight sensation as well! I am thrilled that I am now learning how to create websites, audio/video edit, and photoshop (among other things) in this Educational Multimedia program. I am learning lots of things and I want to really focus on what my passions are in this program. My goal is to narrow that focus, hone my skills, and find a niche that my expertise can serve. I will be thinking about this during the upcoming months as I dive back in to school.