Ilene Winokur Alzaid, Ed.D is a passionate educator and supportive mentor who has lived in Kuwait since 1984. She was an Elementary School Principal, English Foundation Program University Director and Accreditation Steering Committee, Chairperson. 

I met Ilene at ISTE last year in San Antonio. It was like we had  known each other for years. We decided to be silly and took a fun selfie. She is now the President-elect of the Global Collaboration Network at ISTE and we’ll be connecting at ISTE again in June.  I added a few excerpts from the podcast below:
 

About you, your family, and your move to Kuwait
My background is a little up and down. I graduated in 1977 from University of Buffalo in History. I ended up going back for my MBA where I met my husband, Abdulmohsen Al Zaid. I had several jobs working in different parts of the US but our phone bills were getting high.  I ended up following my husband to Kuwait in 1984.I had to learn the language because I only knew a few words of Arabic when I moved there.
The first five and a half years, we lived with my mother-in-law who didn’t speak any English. It was really important for me to absorb the culture and learn the language. Because I was home and raising our kids, I was able to spend a lot of time with her. The culture was so different that I had to integrate into it slowly. I have three children, 32, 30 and 27. My oldest son, Barrak, moved to Thailand and is an artist involved in juried projects in the region. My other son, Meshari, was working HSBC in Kuwait but got accepted to grad school in the states. My daughter, Haya, is a design thinker working in Boston. I have a 93 year old mom in Buffalo so I have a few reasons why I go back to the States.

from left to right my children: Meshari, Haya, Barrak Al Zaid
 
Becoming an educator
I raised my children in Kuwait and didn’t go back to work until 1995. In 1995-96, there was a new small school opening with only 85 students. I became their third grade teacher without any background in education, so I knew I had to go back and get the certification. I went back through a program at the College of New Jersey who brought professors to Kuwait and got my ESL certification.

Attendees from TESOL Kuwait at TESOL International Conference 2017 in Seattle.
All schools in Kuwait are multi-cultural, and all children learn English starting in first grade. Kuwait recognizes bilingualism with English is an unofficial second language. I am a member of TESOL. A big part of my learning is that I became a member of ASCD. I started reading about differentiated instruction and personalized learning.  Learning about all kinds of new things that I didn’t know before and needed to learn for my ESL students. I needed a better way and a hands-on strategy to deliver the content so they could understand it and be able to connect to them. I ended up moving to problem- and project-based learning. With all of that, I got interested in professional development because I was developing myself.
IAFOR International Conference on Language Learning in Dubai
Dr. Ilene Winokur, FPU Director, Heba El-Hadary, EFU Coordinator, and Kelle Hutchinson, FPU Accreditation Coordinator in GUST’s English Foundation Unit (EFU) presented at the IAFOR International Conference on Language Learning in Dubai from February 16-18 on “Effective Program Review Using Data Driven Analysis in an Intensive English Program in Kuwait,” for higher education faculty from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

The EFU curriculum provides students with an array of opportunities to demonstrate mastery of the curriculum. The ongoing Program Review Process provides administrators and instructors with the information necessary to make vital educational decisions in the classroom. No one type of assessment is capable of providing all this information; h...