Teaching & Curriculum Design
Designing and delivering English and workforce-readiness courses for refugee and newcomer adults.
- Year
- 2019-present
- Role
- ESOL Instructor & Curriculum Designer
- Status
- Active
- Teaching
- Curriculum
- Workforce readiness
- ESOL
The work
Most of what I know about language and AI learning, I learned in the classroom. For years I’ve designed and taught English and career-readiness courses for refugee and newcomer adults - work that ranges from everyday English to hybrid courses that prepare learners for specific careers.
What I've designed
- Career-readiness and English curricula for adult refugee learners, built around real workplace needs.
- Hybrid healthcare-pathway courses (including Certified Nursing Assistant training) that combine language learning with concrete certification goals.
- Train-the-Trainer workshops that help other educators align their teaching with adult-education standards.
What guides it
I design for the learners who are actually in the room: people with serious goals, limited time, and lives in motion. That means curricula that are flexible, responsive, and aimed at real outcomes - better jobs, more confidence, and the ability to keep learning independently. These curricula always follow a “student-first” design: I spend a lot of time on needs assessment and understanding students’ true needs in real-life contexts. This process is non-negotioable for me in every curriculum that I design and every class that I teach. Because at the end of the day, my instruction must serve students’ needs and bring them closer to what matters to them in life. I have seen it work: student engagement and outcomes say it all!
I designed and developed a task-based curriculum of English for career-readiness for adults with refugee/immigrant backgrounds. Lessons and modules are centered around their specific needs and goals from career exploration to interview preparation and landing jobs. The Education team and I at IINE-Lowell also developed a task-based curriculum to prepare students for their Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) state trainings and tests. This curriculum also serves as a preparatory skills training course for adults who aim to pursue other careers in healthcare, such as Personal Care Assistant (PCA), MA (Medical Assistant), and Home Health Aide (HHA).