Supporting Skilled Immigrants: A Toolkit for ESL Practitioners
This publication discusses the dilemma of the 2.7 million foreign-trained professionals in the U.S. who are unemployed or under-employed and who are not well served by most adult education and workforce systems. Through the use of a series of "critical incidents," drawn from real-life stories of such immigrants, the Toolkit attempts to develop a list of "dos and don'ts" when working with this population. The report emphasizes the importance of developing effective intake tools and using contextualized instruction in the classroom.
The Toolkit concludes with a chapter profiling four model programs targeting this population: the English Health Train initiative of the California Welcome Back Center, the Washington State I-BEST Program; the Massachusetts Integrated Career Awareness Curriculum; and the English for International Professionals program of the Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning of Colorado. (Summary by Prof. Nick Montalto.)
Global Talent Bridge. (2011). "Supporting Skilled Immigrants: A Toolkit for ESL Practitioners." Retrieved from http://www.globaltalentbridge.org/toolkit/pdf/SupportingSkilledImmigrantsToolkit.pdf