Community Teaching

PEDAL@GSE (Practical English for Daily Living) offers ESL classes to family members of students, staff, faculty and scholars at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as classes open to all members of the West Philadelphia community through a partnership with the Free Library of Philadelphia. PEDAL also serves as an in-house teacher development program for TESOL master’s students at the Penn Graduate School of Education.

In this program, I designed and co-taught ESL classes for members of the West Philadelphia community. I was also lead facilitator for ESL classes for family members of Penn students and scholars, which included mentoring and supervising a team of four teachers in classroom teaching, lesson design, and reflective practice.

Moder Patshala provides educational support to Bangladeshi-American and other immigrant students and their families in the West Philadelphia community by offering a number of classes and programs, including ESL, college preparation, computer literacy and homework assistance.

In this program, I facilitated ESL and literacy-focused activities and tutored middle and high school students as part of a collaboration with the Penn Graduate School of Education

The SSJ Welcome Center, located in the Allegheny neighborhood of Philadelphia, offers opportunities that enable immigrants and other community members to improve their quality of life through access to education, support services and programs leading to self-sufficiency.

At the Welcome Center, I designed and taught ESL classes for adult immigrant and refugee learners from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Vietnam and Haiti.

Aquinas Center, located in the South Philadelphia community, is a welcoming space that offers mutual support and fosters shared understanding across boundaries of class, race, ethnicity, language and geographic distance. The Center offers educational programs, volunteer experiences, and support services for newly arrived immigrants and refugees and other community members.

At Aquinas Center, I co-taught an ESL class for adult learners from Mexico, Venezuela and Honduras.

Puentes de Salud is an organization promoting the health and wellness of Philadelphia’s Latinx immigrant population through healthcare, educational programs and community building. One of its sub-programs, Puentes Hacia el Futuro, provides educational programming for children and their families in the South Philadelphia community. 

At Puentes, I worked as an ESL and after-school tutor for elementary school students at Southwark School.