Thank you for taking the first step to understanding the challenges that many of our multilingual students face as they pursue a higher education in a language, culture, and country that they were not born into.

In 2019, we sent out a survey to the faculty to understand the questions you might have as their teachers. The results of that survey demonstrated that while many teachers have an understanding of these students’ experiences, there were many more who wanted to help but didn’t know how.

As you go through these learning modules, please reach out to the ESL program at ESL@southwest.tn.edu if you have questions, comments, or constructive criticism that could improve this course.

In this module, you will answer a few questions that will begin our discussion of English language learners.

In this module, we will discuss the backgrounds of our ESL population.

In this module, we consider the resources available at Southwest for our students.

In this module, we will look at strategies teachers can use in their classrooms to help ESL students.

This module focuses on our actual students. We reached out to some students in our ESL program to ask them about the challenges they have faced in Memphis. What follows is what they shared with us.

Their names have been changed and their responses are being read by friends and colleagues.