Educator

Relevant quality professional development keeps teachers energized and effective. Deborah Kennedy’s workshops engage teachers in high-leverage teaching practices that motivate learners, and her technical assistance builds expertise in curriculum development, program design, formative assessment, and program evaluation. Her focus on strengths unlocks the transformative power of adult language skills education for all adult education professionals.

• An asset-oriented approach to language teaching: Presentations and workshops introduce the key understandings that underlie strengths-based approaches to education and give teachers tools for applying these approaches in the adult education classroom.
• Choosing and using online resources in adult education: Workshops demonstrate ways of evaluating design, layout, and content of online resources in relation to adult learners’ reading and media literacy skills, and provide strategies for teaching adult learners to locate and understand information on life skills topics such as personal finance, health, nutrition, and career choices.
• Teaching for communicative competence: Online courses guide adult educators and postsecondary teaching professionals in applying a learner-focused approach, integrating language and content in courses, structuring instruction through backward design, and conducting rubric-based assessment.
• Speaking and writing for business and the professions: Online and face-to-face instruction develops oral presentation and written communication skills for professionals who are non-native speakers of English.

Selected Projects

TESOL International Association – Online course developer and instructor

• Redeveloped and taught fully online six-week course in Teaching Adult Learners as part of the TESOL Core Certificate Program for practitioners teaching English as a second or foreign language (three course offerings per year)
• Taught fully online one-year Advanced Practitioner certification course
• Redeveloped online self-study course in Teaching and Assessing Adult Learners.
• Developed course syllabus and curriculum for online course based on The 6 Principles for Effective Teaching of English Learners: Adult Education and Workforce Development

National Association for Gifted Children – Online course designer

• Developed online structure and format for six-module professional development series on Curriculum Design for Teachers of Gifted and High-Potential Students

Center for Advanced Proficiency in English, George Mason University – course developer and instructor

• Designed, developed and taught fully online six-week course in summary writing for federal personnel.
• Taught fully online 10-week course in business writing for federal personnel.

National Capital Language Resource Center – web resource developer

• Developed The Essentials of Language Teaching, a resource website on communicative, task-based language teaching for university level language instructors and teaching assistants.

Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC – Associate Vice President, Adult English Language Education, 2012–2016

• Led all aspects of the organization’s activities in the area of adult English language education, including research, professional development, program design and evaluation, assessment, and curriculum and materials development
• Oversaw all aspects of English for Heritage Language Speakers, a program that enables adults who are native speakers of critical languages to develop the professional English language proficiency needed to obtain and retain federal employment