MY ROLE: Adjunct ESOL Instructor

CLASS SPONSOR: City College, Continuing & Professional Studies, English Language Institute

A 5-week 100-hour Intermediate ESOL course for 19 students, 4 days a week, 5 hours a day.

In taking over an existing class, I had to quickly assess students' skill levels, interests, and learning styles and pick up where they had left off. I worked closely with the Program Director, a fellow teacher, and Department staff to set up an LMS in Schoology, gather course materials, and set class goals. Nearly half of our students' had F1 Visa status which required near perfect attendance and grades of 80% or above. Other students had specific career and higher education goals. Supporting students in reaching these goals required a lot of communication, positive encouragement, and time devoted to make-ups and extra help sessions.

In creating a syllabus and lesson plans, I leveraged key themes and content from the assigned National Geographic Pathways textbook, and I worked in supplemental content to touch on students' interests: We Are New York videos, popular songs, TED Talks, and StoryCorps podcasts. Each lesson offered practice with vocabulary, interactive activities using the 4 core skills (LSRW) and key grammar points relevant to academic writing.

Our class had 2 hours of Computer Lab time each week where we focused on posting writing to the students' individual Weebly websites. We also used this time to do media-based assignments like recording street interviews on cellphones and uploading them to Schoology and data literacy exercises using mobile apps like NYC.gov's 311 neighborhood data app.