Hello, @levenja, and Welcome to Steemit.
Thanks for the well-written post. As an English teacher (and writer), I can assure you that your English is decent quality and completely understandable.
Of course, there is room for improvement. But given the fact that you arrived in the USA only 2 years ago, you are clearly capable of rapid advancement and improvement. Very RAPID!
Below are a few basic points of advice re posting on Steemit.
1 – Longer posts are more lucrative than short posts. If you make a post of 20–30 paragraphs, it's more likely to earn rewards.
2 – Include some photos, images or graphs, to complement the text.
3 – Make sure the text and photos are formatted properly, so that your post looks attractive and appealing.
4 – Be yourself.
5 – Be interesting and informative.
6 – Create quality content. Steemit is intended to be a platform of quality content. (You will see many insignificant posts with meager content and no quality. Most of those of posts [called “shitposts” by Steemit whale Stellabelle] will earn few rewards and soon pass into oblivion.)
7 – Get online and start curating. Read various posts, comment on those posts you find interesting, and upvote those posts. That’s the best way to attract followers.
Hope this helps for now. Good luck, and Full Steem Ahead!
Thank you) I really appreciate you notes for me.
You’re welcome. One more point. Submitting photos in the various photo contests is a great way to earn a bit of Steem and to attract followers. Here are links to 3 contests.
@photocontests, organized by @juliank
Daily color challenges, organized by @colorchallenge (Temporarily inactive)
#tepchallenge, organized by @theexplorer
For entries into those photo contests, short posts are OK. But it's a good idea to add a bit of text explaining the photo, to give the post some meat and to make it more interesting.