Renata Elzbieta Martin was born in Krakow where she studied Polish Literature at UJ. After moving to the US, Renata received MA in Liberal Studies from Rutgers University (master thesis: annotated translation of works of Polish women's rights advocate Teofila Samolinska). Currently Renata is an EdD candidate in Applied Linguistics at Columbia. Renata also is a Certified ESL teacher. For last five years she has been teaching Polish at the Polska Szkola in Mahwah, NJ and also tutoring individual students in English. She is interested in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, methodology of teaching languages and bilingual/bicultural education.