Sasha Endo is the Program Liaison for the Community Learning and Service Partnership (CLASP).  She matches Cornell employees and students for semester-long mutual learning partnerships, and also carries out tasks focused on each of these populations. On the student side, she mentors those who have joined the CLASP program through affiliated courses on adult learning, as they practice lesson design, facilitation, and teaching skills while working one-on-one with their employee learning partner.  On the flip-side of this partnership, Sasha recruits, orients, and especially loves assisting employees in accessing learning resources and encouraging them to cultivate skills and confidence to become self-directed learners. The most inspiring moments happen when student-employee pairs discover new understandings about each other, and about themselves, on a human level as well as an academic one.

With many years of experience working in adult education and a Masters in Education from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Secondary Education) and SUNY Cortland (Second Language Education: English as a Second Language), Sasha brings skills and reflections from the field to the course she is currently teaching at Cornell: Adult Language Learners and Marginalization: Applied Teaching Methods for Empowerment (EDUC 4200). She is also a founding member and teacher at Open Doors English: The Julie Rudd Coulombe Language Program, a project of the Center for Transformative Action, which empowers adult English language learners in Ithaca and Tompkins County to live fuller lives through affordable, comprehensive English language (ESL) classes.