Shifting the Narrative: The Integration of Refugee Students' Assets in the Language Learning Classroom

Adult English language learners within the refugee community need a language-learning paradigm that is compatible with varying levels of language capabilities, literacy, and cultural contexts. As teachers to speakers of other languages, it is imperative we create pedagogies that incorporate approaches that foster emotionally, intellectually, and culturally nourishing learning environments, in spite of incongruent language levels. The crux of my project, therefore, was the nurturing of inter-cultural communication in an English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) classroom by way of holistic and asset-based approaches. My hope is to create a learning curriculum that acknowledges all cultures, language levels, and is easily accessible to teachers and learners.