Jim Sosnowski
Graduate Student, Curriculum & Instruction
Contact
L422 Digital Computing Lab
1304 W. Springfield (mail code 256)
Champaign (UIUC Campus Mail), IL 61820
Biography
Jim Sosnowski is doctoral candidate in Language and Literacy. After earning his BA in Biology with a grade 6-12 licensure from Augustana College, he taught high school science in the suburbs of Chicago before teaching EFL in Central and South America. Motivated by his EFL teaching experiences, he came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007 to pursue an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language where he continued on as a Lecturer, teaching ESL at the post-secondary level. In 2010, Jim helped to launch Language Partners (LP), a prison-based, peer-taught, ESL program based out of Danville Correctional Center, of which he is now a Co-coordinator. His research emerged from his participation in LP as he and the teachers began exploring how their program contributed to the minoritization and silencing of their students. His dissertation is focused on examining how ideologies related to language, race, and education contribute to the minoritization of adult English language learners. Through partnering with the LP teachers, he hopes this research will contribute to a more equitable and critical teaching environment that will impact the LP community and challenge deficit-based pedagogies commonly used when working with adult language learners.