A former English teacher in Honolulu, Kristin Kinkel earned a bachelor of arts with a focus on English as a second language (ESL) from Hawaii Pacific University. Kristin Kinkel attended the school on a full cheerleading scholarship and graduated as a member of the Alpha Chi National College Honor Society.

Created in 1922 to endorse academic excellence, Alpha Chi is open to the top 10 percent of junior, senior, and graduate students at institutions where chapters have been established. There have been numerous notable alumni over the past 95 years, including the following.

- Susan Spaeth Kyle
A former journalist, Kyle penned numerous romance novels under the pseudonym Diana Palmer. She was inducted into Piedmont College’s Alpha Chi chapter in 1994.

- Clayton C. Anderson
Inducted into the Hastings College Alpha Chi chapter in 1980, Anderson is an astronaut who spent 152 days aboard the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Expedition 15 in 2007.

- Dan Rather
A former news anchor for CBS Evening News, Rather has won Emmy and Peabody awards for his work. He was made an Alpha Chi member in 1952 while attending Sam Houston State University.

Kristin Kinkel served as an English teacher and is a former cheerleader and cheerleading coach who attended Hawaii Pacific University on a full cheerleading scholarship. Prior to that, she attended the University of Oregon, and later returned to Oregon to work as a bilingual educational assistant. In her spare time, she enjoys music and one of Kristin Kinkel’s favorite bands is the Oregon-based Pink Martini.

Pink Martini is an award-winning band with a dozen members that have collaborated with famous international singers like Rufus Wainwright, from Canada, and Saori Yuki, from Japan. They have also worked with filmmaker Gus Van Sant and puppeteer Basil Twist. Five of the band’s albums have gone gold in several countries, selling more than three million copies internationally.

Pink Martini had an unconventional, and quite political, beginning. Thomas Lauderdale started it when he was working as an Oregonian politician in 1994 and recognized the need for better, more generally appealing music at fundraising events for issues like civil rights and the environment.

Shortly after creating his little orchestra Pink Martini, he and China Forbes wrote Sympathique, a song that became wildly popular in France with workers who were on strike thanks to its chorus je ne veux pas travailler (translated to mean I don’t want to work). The song was awarded Song of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique in France. The band is still going strong 22 years later, and recently released Je dis oui!, its ninth studio album, in collaboration with several global artists.

English teacher and former cheerleader Kristin Kinkel attended Hawaii Pacific University on a full cheerleading scholarship, where she studied teaching English as a second language. She has worked in Hawaii and Oregon as an English teacher and traveled all over the world in her capacity as a Varsity Spirit Corporation judge and head instructor. Kristin Kinkel especially enjoys traveling to southern Spain, where she lived for a time as a child.

Traveling to southern Spain can be an astronomical adventure. The region of Andalusia especially maintains influences from the invasion of the Muslim African Moors, which lasted for 800 years. The Moors introduced several of the signature flavors of southern Spanish food, having brought rice, saffron, figs, dates, oranges, pomegranates, and lemons with them.

The region’s bounty shows up in many of its signature dishes. Gazpacho, a chilled tomato soup garnished with cucumber or red peppers is one of the most famous dishes from the region. Fresh fish from the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean are also highlighted, and the area is known for its delicately flavored cured hams. Jamon serrano, a thinly sliced pork made from free-range black-footed pigs that eat acorns, is especially well-loved. Additionally, chorizo is a well-known form of sausage that gets its red hue from paprika and smoked red peppers. Bread and many other dishes are flavored with the region’s plentiful olives and olive oil.

Former ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher Kristin Kinkel comes from a background in cheerleading. A former Varsity Spirit Corporation judge and Portland Trailblazers Stunt Team member, Kristin Kinkel traveled frequently and often ran special clinics and workshops for cheerleaders.

All athletes must practice their skills safely, whether they are professionals or just starting out. If you participate in cheerleading stunts, consider the following safety tips to avoid serious injuries.

- Focus on conditioning. Many common strain injuries can be prevented or mitigated with strength and flexibility training. For this reason, many cheerleaders do strength training in the off-season.

- Warm up and stretch before every practice or performance. Jumping jacks and jogging help muscles warm up, which can help prevent injuries.

- Practice in safe environments. Cheerleaders should always practice stunts on foam mats, never a hard floor. Proper spotting is also important. Spotters should always be close by, especially when new stunts are being learned.

- Tend to any injuries immediately, and know when to take the time to heal. Continuing to practice or perform while you are injured can exacerbate the injury and extend the healing time.

While she was a student at Hawaii Pacific University learning how to teach English as a second language, Kristin Kinkel was a member of the Alpha Chi National College Honor Society. At the same time, Kristin Kinkel was involved in competitive cheerleading and served as an instructor and judge for Varsity Spirit Corporation.

Varsity is the umbrella organization for many leading US cheerleading bodies including educational clinics, competitions, and camps. Varsity camps always include high-quality certified instructors that can provide instruction on complex stunts following the highest standards of the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators (AACCA) safety rules.

Summer cheerleading camps can teach athletic skills and spirit skills using props like pom poms to help energize a crowd. Many camps also work with a specific theme over the course of their time together to help unify the experience. Participants also work together with rallies, ceremonies, and other bonding experiences to help a team unite. Varsity’s camp programs are the largest worldwide, with more than 350,000 participants attending each year.

From 1999 to 2000, Kristin Kinkel served as an ESL teacher at Honolulu, Hawaii-based school ESL Master, where she tutored students visiting the state from Japan. A former varsity cheerleader for Hawaii Pacific University, Kristin Kinkel maintains an active lifestyle and engages in physical hobbies such as sailing.

People typically think of sailing as a relaxing adventure on the sea, but it is far more physically demanding than it looks. For example, sailing can help with cardiovascular fitness as the strenuous activity leads to more oxygen uptake. A less frequently discussed benefit of sailing is its positive effects on mental health. In fact, a recent study claims that it can be used as a form of rehabilitation among patients with mental disorders.

Published in a 2014 issue of Clinical Practice & Epidemiology in Mental Health, the study looked at sailing and learning-to-sail rehabilitation protocol as an adjunctive therapy to drug treatment among patients with severe mental disorders. The researchers studied 40 patients over the course of six months. The results showed that sailing resulted in a statistically significant improvement in clinical status and general functioning, although the improvement has been noted to be limited within the period of exposure.

Former professional cheerleader and Varsity Spirit Corporation judge Kristin Kinkel was an educator for several years after attaining her BA. Kristin Kinkel focused on English as a second language and bilingual education, which were much-discussed topics in education at that time.

Over the last two decades, researchers have looked extensively at bilingualism and its impact on the brain and learning. Their findings suggest that being bilingual fundamentally changes the brain, and that bilingual education can offer students many long-lasting benefits.

Bilingual learning can improve attention. Intentionally speaking one language instead of another requires task switching, a subset of the executive function. This helps bilingual learners remain focused despite distractions, and improves their ability to switch from one mental task to another efficiently and effectively.

The same principles allow bilingual learners to improve their responses to social cues. They must decide which language it is most appropriate to address someone in. At a young age this can provide an advantage in developing social and emotional skills, including empathy.

Kristin Kinkel graduated from Hawaii Pacific University with a bachelor of arts in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). Kristin Kinkel went on to serve as an English language teacher in Hawaii and a bilingual education assistant in Oregon.

When teaching students who are learning the English language, the most important element is to support the students’ learning at their current level. A teacher who might ordinarily present content in a purely verbal manner may need to write instructions on the board or provide visual diagrams. Many English language learners appreciate receiving written material in advance, so that they can have more time to familiarize themselves with it.

Nevertheless, practice is also essential. Language learners need daily practice in the four domains of speaking, writing, reading, and listening, known colloquially as SWRL. Prescribed sentence structures, such as “I believe this is true because …” or “I agree with my classmate because …” can help to familiarize the student with the constructs of the language and help to build comfort in academic settings. Meanwhile, opportunities to practice common conversational phrases and culturally specific vocabulary serve to support students’ overall comfort level as well as their familiarity with the language of daily living.