ESL for Leadership

The Women's Building and Mujeres Unidas y Activas ESL program

In 2010 I was contracted by Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) and The Women’s Building (TWB) to develop and teach an ESL class for their members and community. My goal was to create an ESL program that integrated the instruction of English around their organization missions of supporting women leadership and community participation. Over the course of a year and a half, I created a program description that documented the vision, context and rationale of the ESL program as well as its distinguishing features.

Research project-based curriculum
Development of leadership skills
Highlighting student stories and voices
Assistant teacher internship
Student portfolios

Read the TWB ESL program description.
Read an article about the TWB ESL program.

The TWB ESL research project-based curriculum

In line with the vision of the class I developed a research project-driven curriculum to connect learning English to leadership and community though integrating the following:

Learning English
Carrying out and presenting research
Developing leadership skills

The students carry out 6 projects over the 10 week session, with each project providing scaffolding for the next one and each succeeding project requiring more skill and learning on part of the students. The projects are all research-driven and culminate in a final research project with students researching a community issue and presenting their findings to a public audience.
See the program curriculum with course overview, lesson plans and selected teaching materials.