A Teacher's Journey at the CLC

Kamrun is an educator. “When my family moved to the U.S. from Bangladesh in August 2023, I right away started looking for ways to use my teaching experience here,” she explains.

Before moving to the U.S., Kamrun was a Lecturer of Economics at Tajpur College for 24 years. “I really like teaching, but I knew I could not teach the same thing in the U.S,” she says. She started looking for teacher training opportunities in Cambridge and found the Early Childhood Education Career Training Program. “I tried to be a preschool teacher, but my English was not so good, so I decided to go to school to improve my English.”

Kamrun started taking English classes at the CLC in October 2023. “I liked taking classes to improve my English at the CLC, but I still wanted to become a teacher,” she says. In May 2024, her CLC advisor told her about a summer training course to become an ESOL teacher, offered by English for New Bostonians. “I was so excited to earn my Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certificate,” she says.

During the 2024-25 school year, Kamrun continued her studies. During the day, she took a Level 5 English class to further improve her skills. In the evening, she interned as a teaching assistant in a CLC Level 1 class. "I always wanted to be a teacher for adults, and now I can help people like me: immigrants who want to improve their English,” she explains. In June, Kamrun graduated from the CLC.

Now Kamrun is co-teaching an ESOL class offered through the Cambridge Public Library’s Literacy Project. “I need to get more experience teaching and teaching at the library will help,” she says. “I hope that some day I can teach my own class at the CLC!”

Do you want to improve your English? Sign up for an ESOL info session today!

Photo caption: Kamrun (right), Vice Mayor Marc McGovern (center), and CLC Director Maria Kefallinou (left) on stage at the 2025 CLC graduation. Kamrun holds her CLC diploma. Photo credit: Kyle Klein.