CC-BY-NC-SA 2025 New Language Solutions Avenue Program Standards for Technology-Enhanced Language Learning, version 1.2 Administrator Profile: In the mid-1970s, Sharon Rajabi travelled to England from her home country, Iran, to further her education. After completing her A Levels, she made a fortuitous decision to study computer science at the University of Essex just as the first mass-produced personal computers were about to transform society. With her degree in hand, Sharon returned to Iran in 1980 where, in addition to teaching high school mathematics, she developed and taught a course in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Sadly, 1980 marked the beginning of a devastating war between Iran and Iraq. It soon became dangerous to live in Tehran, so Sharon and her husband moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where Sharon found a teaching job at an International School. When the war ended in 1988, the couple returned to Iran with the intention of emigrating to Canada. When permission was granted in 1991, the Rajabi family – now including two young children – began a new life in Toronto. Shortly after arriving, Sharon applied for employment with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). Her experience as a high school teacher, EFL instructor, curriculum designer, and computer science specialist was exactly what the Board was looking for. Computers were still an exciting new thing in 1991, and the Board was looking for experienced ESL instructors who could also teach computer skills to new immigrants. Within a few days of her job interview, Sharon was hired. However, as she soon discovered, there was no established curriculum for teaching computer skills to immigrants. Sharon would have to create one from scratch. As she describes it, “I worked like a dog to design a program that would begin almost immediately. I was maybe a week ahead of my students. What I came up with was a 12-week course that, with a bit of honing, would eventually become an 8-week, 200-hour course.” In 1994, Sharon moved from the TDSB to the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) where she continued to teach a similar course. In 1998, the TCDSB proposed an update to the Language Instruction for New Canadians (LINC 4 & 5) curriculum guidelines. The first LINC curriculum guidelines addressed only the first three of what would eventually become eight levels. Sharon was invited to join the curriculum team to conceptually design, develop, and manage her first project. Over the next few years, Sharon became a key contributor, writing proposals for government funding, managing projects, writing or revising LINC curriculum guidelines, and creating guidelines to incorporate computer-assisted language learning into ESL instruction. Along the way, she somehow found time to earn a Master of Education degree at York University. In 2021, Sharon retired from full-time work at the TCDSB. Today, she works as an independent Adult Education consultant. In Sharon’s Own Words Lessons Learned Technology has changed spectacularly in the years since I was an instructor, but our attempts to make use of the technology of that era aren’t much different from current efforts to harness new apps or new Internet resources to streamline, enrich, and improve teaching, learning, and administration. This is an ongoing story. If I were back in the classroom today, I would be using a different set of computer-assisted learning tools. If I were to teach ten years from now, the tool set would have changed again – but the intent of the instruction, if not the details, would remain essentially the same. Keeping up with technology in administration is not that different from the classroom. The equipment and software programs change periodically, yet we learn to transfer our existing skills to 30
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