Hello colleagues,
You will not want to miss this event on September 15 at 3:00 pm ET, led by Susan Finn Miller in the English Language Acquisition Community of Practice. Guest presenter, Lee Shainisto, co-founder of Intercambio in Boulder, Colorado,
This practical session will provide concrete tips for administrators and teachers to involve adult English learners in powerful ways in the classroom.
- How can we become better partners with adult English learners?
- How can we create open doors for learners to share their perspectives and experiences?
- How could these changes impact learning?
This session will engage participants in discussion about ways to make our work more equitable and less transactional, reflecting cultural humility.
Lee Shainis's Bio:
Lee Shainis co-founded Intercambio, an independent nonprofit, in 2001. Intercambio has trained 5,000 volunteer English teachers in Boulder County and had 10,000 adult learners from 60+ countries take one-on-one and group English classes. Intercambio’s unique Confidence and Connections curriculum and relationship-based model are used by hundreds of organizations nationwide. Lee authored The Immigrant Guide, a tool used by 250,000 immigrants to learn about laws, systems, and culture in the U.S. He also authored Pronunciation Fun, which has been used by tens of thousands of English learners. He has facilitated over 100 trainings for different organizations on cultural humility and competence. Lee is dedicated to ongoing self-reflection, learning, and working to fulfill the potential of adult English classes to improve our ability to talk to each other and to foster cultural exchanges that build perspective and friendship, and unlock strengths of multicultural communities. His article Shifting the Power Imbalance in Adult Education was published in the May 2021 COABE Journal on Racial Equity.Mutual Learning & Shifting the Power Imbalance in Adult English Classes