ESOL Educators Begin New Careers With Catholic Charities Boston

Diane Barese previously worked as an early childhood educator and curriculum director. Jennifer Philips was a product manager. Nick Kaneb was a public accountant. All three are different ages, live in different places, and have their own life journeys. 

But today, they are all Catholic Charities Boston colleagues, having started this fall in the agency’s Adult Education department as English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) staff. And before embarking on new careers in the nonprofit world, they were all ESOL volunteers. 

“I need to make a difference, and I feel like I make a difference here,” said Barese, who teaches ESOL classes four days a week at Catholic Charities South in Brockton. “I am here to help the students learn, and I’m going to make it as fun as possible.” 

Barese worked in early childhood education for 32 years before retiring, though she said she didn’t enjoy being retired. One of her favorite parts of her career was not only being in the classroom, but also teaching new teachers. As a curriculum director, many of the teachers she worked with were English language learners. 

“And I thought you know what, I want to teach English to adults,” Barese said. 

So, she went back to school to earn her teaching certificate and started volunteering, first with a tutoring company in Quincy, and then with Catholic Charities. What started as a volunteer teaching assistant position soon became an opportunity to be a teacher. 

“Being in the classroom, asking questions, giving my feedback, it all made me feel so welcome,” Barese said of her time as a volunteer. “And I realized I love this. It was such a great volunteer experience.” 

For Phillips and Kaneb, they started volunteering at Catholic Charities’ English Language Learning Academy (ELLA) in Lynn with zero teaching experience. Both worked in the corporate world and felt similarly being on a “career conveyor belt” with a defined path, but not much fulfillment. 

“I didn’t even know who I was,” Phillips said of her time in corporate. “I knew I had all this passion for something inside me.” 

After leaving her job, Phillips said she pursued many options, and the one that stuck was volunteering at ELLA. She thought she would mostly observe the classroom but was quickly tapped to start teaching. 

“I fell in love with it,” said Phillips, who went back to school to earn her graduate degree. “I just really felt connected to the students and being in a community just really resonated with me.” 

Kaneb said when he was first presented with the opportunity to volunteer teach at ELLA, he wasn’t too confident given it was something he had never done before. But today, not only has he found his calling, but he has also developed lessons geared toward further building his students’ confidence to tackle everyday tasks, such as speaking to a doctor. 

“After that lesson, one student came in and said he just had a doctor’s appointment and it was the first time that he didn’t have to use a translator,” Kaneb said. “I told him, ‘You have no idea how happy that made me.’ I hear from my wife, my family, and my friends about how happy I am now. I am me, and it is every day I feel that and it’s the best thing.” 

And Phillips and Kaneb are not just teachers at ELLA, but now serve as the program’s director and manager, following in the footsteps of the recently retired director Trish Kennedy, who initially recruited Phillips and Kaneb to teach. 

“We talk about trust, and that is what Trish was and is to our students,” Kaneb said. “She was the heart of the program, and the students feel that way about her. Those are going to be the real shoes to fill.”