Mental Health and the ESL Classroom: A Guide for Teachers Working with Refugees

This manual guides English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teachers by outlining the complex burdens that refugee students carry and setting out concrete steps that ESL teachers can take in order to turn their classrooms into effective and welcoming teaching and learning environments. The seven sections focus on the following: (1) “The Refugee and Mental Heath: An Introduction” (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder); (2) “The ESL Classroom” (the classroom as a safe environment, classroom structure and schedule, recreating identity in the classroom, and building community in the classroom); (3) “The Multi-Faceted Role of the ESL Teacher” (ESL teacher role, orientation, and boundaries; the refugee experience and spillover into the classroom, getting help outside the classroom, and care for the ESL classroom); (4) “Student Needs Assessment” (interviewing, listening, and observing); (5) “Curriculum and Instruction” (frameworks for developing curriculum, from frameworks to practice, integrating community resources into the curriculum, and reflective teaching and self-evaluation); (6) “Bibliography and Internet Resources”; and (7) “Acknowledgements.” (Contains 34 print and Internet resources.) (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education) (SM)