The Educational Centre, Inc. including Home School Advantage, The Private School for English Language Learners, Global English, tutors for English for ELL of all ages, SAT, Act, TOEFL, and IETLS preparation, and International Business English, where OUR business English focuses on global corporations with a multinational work force, private study for the employee, and students in business communications. In-house and on-site corporate training as well as expert training in government contracts, living and working in foreign countries, and social etiquette as it pertains to the Middle East and Asia, North Africa, and the Balkans are available. The Educational Centre and its Constructivist approach to individualized instruction is the collaboration of an English teacher, Lynn Crum, and her international corporate executive husband, Tom Crum. 
Living and traveling to various countries in the Middle East and other parts of Asia, North and East Africa, Haiti, and the Balkans for the last 20 years, the couple has had incredible experiences learning, working, socializing, and being accepted by many cultures and non-native speakers. While in the Middle East, they were introduced to many friends of Indian, Sri Lankan, and Pakistani decent, as well as the Arab society.
Their lives have been an ongoing learning experience in cultural socialization, multinational business, etiquette, and traditions of the people in a shrinking world.
In 2008, Lynn and Tom made their most recent move to Muscat, Oman, a country that has been a love of theirs for years. But, this move meant she had to give up her Korean ESL students who she taught online from the US. She decided then she had to find a way to take her work with her. She didn’t want just any ESL tutoring business; she wanted to make a difference to the various cultures around the world who had accepted her and her husband so willingly and who she had grown to love and respect.
The wheels began to turn when her husband arrived home from Algeria with a story of problems which arose in his meetings. At a conference table in Algeria, circled by a multinational group of executives, the meeting came to a halt when one single word in a contract was defined differently by several ethnicities. This caused a near collapse of negotiations, man hours were lost, and ultimately money spent. That night, as Tom and Lynn discussed ways to avoid the almost catastrophe, they began planning an ESL school directed toward educating non-native speakers in the rapidly growing area of Global English. The Lingua Franca has become the chosen language of multinational corporations spreading throughout our world, but the training of the non-native speakers being hired by these corporations has remained frozen by an archaic curriculum.
Many English words mean different things to non-native speakers in their own language, so in processing these words from their language to English, there tends to be a glitch. Lynn and Tom vowed to help make the transfer easier, therefore saving time and money for global corporations and providing a way for the non-native speaker to advance in these world-wide corporations where the path to success depends on command of the English language. In the technical world of multinational corporations, the difference in one word in a contract can cause chaos.
In Lynn Crum’s past experiences teaching ESL to business students and young executives, she often drew into play her own experiences in social and business communications, as well as her husband’s advice on specific global corporation issues which her students brought to class. As a team, they offer the ESL business communications student more than a reading, listening, writing curriculum. The business specific instructional and curriculum plan was born for this couple that night.
Lynn Crum is a native speaker, has a BA in English, a secondary teaching certificate afforded by the state of Texas, 5 certifications in ESL, including Grammar Specialist, Business Communications, Large Classes, Young students, and Audio and Video Teaching. She also will complete her Masters in ESL Curriculum and Instruction. She taught in public school, American schools in the Middle East, home school, and private ESL classes to Albanians, Arabs, Chinese, Germans, Koreans, and Spanish. As private schools become an increasingly better choice for our children, The Educational Centre gives the ELL a private school setting to prepare immigrants and long-time citizens to meet their educational needs.
Tom Crum is the former Chief Operating Officer Middle East Region of KBR/Halliburton, currently Chief Executive Officer of Telesis Consulting Group. He is an expert in U.S. Government Contracting and the rebuilding of Iraq, speaking in conferences all over the world on the subject. He helped begin the Great Manmade River Project in Libya, has built and remodeled American Embassies in Oman, Morocco, Somalia, (during the 1992 military event). Remaining in Somalia to support the troops and maintain camps, Crum and the employees of Brown and Root stood by military through missile attacks, ambush, and placing themselves in the line of fire everyday as they worked. Crum faced kidnapping threats and possible death, as a price was placed on his head by a subcontractor in Somalia as the Somalis came over the American University wall to reap the reward. He has worked with the U.S.AID to rebuild the infrastructure in Bosnia after the 1996 war, where he was said to have made Bill Clinton’s Dayton Accord work when he talked Bosnians and Serbians into working together to rebuild a bridge that had been destroyed to keep one from the other. He also rebuilt an old dam at the risk of his own job and without a work order to save a town of people from a total loss, finishing the new dam only two days before the old one gave way. The event to bring democracy to Iraq, placed the Crum family in Kuwait, as Tom led an historical group of government contractors in Iraq, bringing a media flurry over a working relationship between contractor and military that had been peaceful and productive for years. (Memoirs to come)
The Educational Centre: Home School Advantage, Global English, and International Business English are Lynn and Tom Crum’s way of giving back to the people of the world in which they love. Their intent is to give the non-native speaker the same advantages as a native speaker while climbing the corporate ladder of success or going to the University. The Educational Centre welcomes everyone to in for a tour of our facility and talk about what we can do for you.