Claire Pottinger-Schmidt Native Speaker

I was born in Quebec, Canada and completed my music studies at the University of Toronto. The next 4 years were spent teaching in several private schools in Toronto until I decided to move to Basel, Switzerland where I continued my studies as a cellist and gambist at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.   

I moved to Austria in 1997, to spend the next 27 years teaching baroque cello and viola da gamba at the Bruckner Privat Uni, Linz and working as a freelance musician in much of Europe. I continue to teach music part time at the J.J.Fux Konservatorium in Graz and perform as a freelance chamber musician.  

It is a new and exciting experience for me to teach English as a native speaker with so many young and interested students in VS Stainz and VS Marhof. Since music has been a very large part of my own life’s experience, I am very happy to share the richness of the English language with all the students through music, games and stories, dialogues and poems. 

I feel it is, in this day and age, most important for children to be given the opportunity to widen their view of the world and peoples around them. Learning English will help these young people move, understand and be understood in this wide world.