Supporting Multilingual & Immigrant Students

My work teaching at Penn State, UDC, and GW have exposed me to working with immigrant communities even further as these students have often been my students. From my own experience as an immigrant, it is critical that we understand that international students and first generation students have unique experiences within the university environment. Their efforts to meet American standards are met with struggles of acculturation and of being in a new and unfamiliar environment. Learning to support them in their learning is a different and exciting experience that has allowed me to grow in my own teaching abilities.

In 2016-2017, I also taught English as a Second Language at Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School. At Carlos Rosario, I worked directly with the immigrant population in the Washington, D.C. area, teaching them mid-level English language skills. These are working folks who migrated to the United States and are working to better themselves in order to have more opportunities for better employment and a better life. Working with them has been a powerful experience. It is exciting to support fellow immigrants as they work to become part of the community of the United States. It also helped me to understand a different place of English language acquisition and gain new tools for supporting 2nd language learners and multilingual writers.

In 2016, I joined the George Washington University's Writing Center as a Faculty Mentor to strengthen the Center's ability to support multilingual writers. Using the skills I've gained from working with multilingual students at all the institutions I have worked in, along with my facilitation and mentoring skills, I am able to create workshops and develop support systems for our consultants (student tutors) and faculty to work more effectively with multilingual writers at GW.

During my doctoral program in Colorado, I continued my work on growing writing centers' abilities to work with multilingual writers at various institutions. I hope to continue to grow my own abilities, and provide workshops to support other faculty and consultants working with multilingual writers, so that we can all better support the students that join our universities.