Abigail Mancuso and Noah Currie presented October 7th, at the 2022 AAUSC Symposium on Language Pedagogy in Higher Education Italian Section Meeting, with the support and mentorship of Professor Tiziana Serafini. Both students reflected on lessons learned through a summer course and subsequent internship with Professor Serafini along with Professor Suzanne Shanahan regarding language pedagogy targeting students within vulnerable populations. Abigail, an undergraduate in Psychology and Peace Studies minoring in Italian, described the course design and impacts on the refugee population who studied Italian over the summer while Noah, a graduate student in French, combined research interests with a case study of course design element effects on student motivation.