After 20 years managing personnel on Air Force bases around the world, Carina Givens had seen a lot. She'd worked alongside military members from dozens of nations, marveled at colleagues who effortlessly switched between languages, and spent a tour supporting foreign military students at one of the U.S. Department of Defense's premier English language schools. But it wasn't until a casual phone call with her nephew—years after she'd retired and settled back into her hometown of Arkansas City, Kansas—that everything clicked into place.
"I have had kind of a passion for foreign languages and cultures," says Givens, who recently completed her Master of Science in Education in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) through the University of Kansas.
Now, armed with her graduate degree and decades of cross-cultural experience, Givens has her sights set on teaching English in Japan. Her path to this point was anything but linear, but looking back, it's hard not to see how it all connects.
The military career that led her here
As an undergraduate, Givens attended Kansas State University and entered the Air Force shortly after, where she spent the next two decades as a human resource manager. As a personnel officer, she had the rare opportunity to be assigned across virtually every type of military organization, from maintenance units, a NATO headquarters in Germany, and even a Department of Defense English language school in San Antonio. Each assignment brought experiences with new people, new cultures, and new perspectives.
It was during her 2006 deployment with the Multinational Forces in Iraq that Givens first took real notice of the power of language. Working alongside military members from nations across the globe, she was struck by how many of her colleagues spoke not just English and their native language, but several others besides.
"That made an impression on me," she recalls. "I wish I could be bilingual, or multilingual, or have that ability."
Perhaps the most quietly formative experience of her career, though, was a tour at the Defense Language Institute English Language Center (DLIELC) in San Antonio — a DOD institution that teaches English to foreign military students preparing for training at U.S. military schools. Givens worked in student support, helping international students navigate housing, medical access, and the many logistical and cultural adjustments that came with living and studying in the United States. At the time, she filed it away as simply another HR assignment.
"It was completely unexpected to land a job at an English school that I would never have been aware of if I was never assigned there," she says. "In the back of my head, it was like a little flashing light that I ignored, ‘Hey, this is something that you would actually enjoy and might want to look into.’"
When Givens retired from the Air Force in 2014, she returned to Arkansas City without a clear sense of what came next. She knew she had the GI Bill available to fund a master's degree, but the default path—a graduate degree in human resource management—held little appeal. For years, the question of what to study sat unanswered.
Then came a phone call with her nephew. The details are hazy, but somewhere in the conversation, the topic of teaching English came up and suddenly, years of quiet fascination rushed to the surface.
"I love talking about language study," Givens says. "I've self-studied Spanish. I took French in high school and a little in my undergrad. I have books in Japanese…I tried to learn Japanese even when I was middle school age." She'd also served a tour as an instructor at the Air Force Instructor School, where she taught others how to teach. The pieces had been there all along.
"It was kind of an epiphany for me," she says of that phone call. "Oh my gosh, you have an aptitude and an interest in languages, so how about teaching English?"
A search for TESOL programs in Kansas led her to the University of Kansas, and she didn't look much further. "KU came up, and I read about it, and I jumped in."
The unexpected classroom: equity, critical thinking, and growth at KU
Givens enrolled in KU's master’s of education in TESOL pursuing the non-teacher track, which is designed for education professionals who want to specialize in supporting English language learners without pursuing classroom teaching licensure. Givens was, by her own description, an outlier from the start. Most of her classmates were already working teachers with undergraduate degrees in education. Givens came in with two decades of military HR experience and a healthy skepticism she wasn't quite sure what to do with.
Early in the program, Givens found herself navigating a shift in thinking that many graduate students encounter—moving from absorbing and memorizing information to actively engaging with it. For someone coming from outside the traditional teaching world, that transition came with a learning curve, but also a sense of liberation. "It's a master's level program for you to scrutinize, pick at, dissect, and then come up with your own perspective on it," she says. Once that clicked, her military instinct to speak up and think critically found its place in her courses and coursework.
Drawing on the direct, initiative-driven communication culture she'd developed in the military Givens began pushing back, gently but deliberately, in her class discussions. "I also started to get a little more bold and offer my classmates a gentle way of maybe reconsidering their position, or considering how their position might not apply to, or might be detrimental to, other situations."
It was the program's focus on social justice, equity, and diversity in education, however, that left the deepest mark. Givens hadn't expected it, but course after course examined the systemic inequities embedded in American education — how schools are often designed around a narrow cultural framework, leaving multilingual learners and students from diverse backgrounds at a disadvantage.
"I was surprised to see a significant amount of attention given to some of the inequity in education in this country," she says. For Givens, the content resonated on a personal level. Growing up, she'd internalized a common American narrative — that it falls to the individual to adapt and assimilate in order to succeed in society. The program challenged that assumption head-on, reframing it not as a personal responsibility but as a systemic problem with real consequences for real students.
"It taught me how unjust all of that is," she says. It's a realization she carries with her now as she looks ahead. "I'm hoping to use that to keep me motivated and guide me into how I can address the injustices and inequities that I see in my community and in places around me."
A dream fueled by heritage and purpose
For Givens, the appeal of teaching English abroad isn't an abstract vision—it's deeply personal. Her mother was Japanese, and she still has relatives in the country. When she was stationed in Okinawa during her Air Force career, she took leave both coming and going to spend time with family on the mainland. "I really enjoyed being in Japan and living there," she says. That experience, combined with a lifelong love of language and culture, has made teaching English in Japan a clear and meaningful goal.
The TESOL non-teacher track she completed at KU doesn't lead to a Kansas teaching license, but for Givens, that was never the point. Many overseas teaching programs prioritize English fluency above all else, but Givens believes her graduate education sets her apart. Now that she has her degree in hand, she's focused on taking the practical next steps to make the dream a reality: updating her resume, building a CV, and pursuing teaching positions in Japan.
And if Japan doesn't pan out? Givens isn't short on purpose. She's also considered returning to the Defense Language Institute English Language Center as a civilian instructor and closer to home, her program-fueled passion for equity has given her a new lens through which to see her own community. "I am thinking that I could be a social justice thorn in the side of my community," she says with a laugh.
Either way, it's clear that for Givens, the degree was never just a credential. It was the beginning of a new chapter.
It's never too late to find your path
Carina Givens spent 20 years serving her country, lived on multiple continents, and worked alongside people from cultures around the globe all before she ever considered a career in TESOL. Her story is a reminder that the path to finding your purpose isn't always straight, and that the experiences you accumulate along the way are never wasted.
For veterans, career changers, and anyone who has ever felt like graduate school wasn't quite meant for them, Givens' journey offers something valuable: proof that coming to education later, and from a different direction, can be a strength. The perspective she brought to KU's online classrooms made her a more thoughtful student and will make her a more effective educator.
KU's non-licensure tracks are designed for people like Givens: professionals with rich life experience who want to channel that experience into community programs, adult education settings, or classroom support.
If Givens' story resonates with you, KU's admissions outreach advisors are ready to help you explore if KU's online graduate education programs are the right fit for where you want to go next.