I am a scholar, teacher, and mother. I aim to better understand and improve educational opportunities for children who come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and who have special learning needs. My goal is to make learning more meaningful for all children, regardless of dis/ability, language, national origin, gender preference, religious belief, cultural background, or socioeconomic status.

Independent Scholar

Investigating learning struggles in special learning circumstances

Humanity in learning

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Investigating learning struggles through understanding individual, institutional, and interpersonal processes

As a teacher and scholar, I have leveraged my classroom experiences to better understand questions that have been unresolved for decades. Here’s an example of a long-standing question that has perplexed the field of education: Do children who are classified as English learners struggle with learning due to a possible learning disability, because of a cultural/linguistic factor, or a combination of reasons? I examine multiple dimensions, all of which matter in teaching and learning. I argue, school personnel can make better-informed decisions by examining learning struggles through more comprehensive approaches. I emphasize individual, institutional, and interpersonal processes matter in learning (work from sociocultural scholars, e.g., Rogoff, 2003; Cole, 1996).

Individual= Our thoughts, perceptions, experiences, and beliefs.
Institutional= The processes and policies that take place or often govern schools (e.g., policies, practices)
Interpersonal= The things that relate to communication and relationships between people. In special education identification processes, this domain has been understudied.
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My Mission

In 2014, I made the difficult decision to leave the classroom after teaching for 16 years. Bothered by my state’s inequitable policies targeting children classified as English learners (ELs), children who come from homes where multiple languages are spoken, this decision was largely inspired by many unfair processes and practices targeting this group of students. In an increasingly diverse society, the number of children who come from homes where languages other than English are spoken has reached nearly 5 million*, and oftentimes parents are unfamiliar with US school systems. Now my mission is to inspire humanity to better understand and improve educational opportunities for children of all backgrounds through illustrations of learning as cultural-historical processes which can be better understood through examining individual, institutional, and interpersonal dimensions.

*Click here to see facts about English language learners from the Pew Research Center

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Why focus on understanding human behaviors that impact learning?

As humans, we are cultural beings. We all bring individual experiences, educational backgrounds, language(s), and emotions or behaviors. Because there are no two same human beings on this earth, our cultural backgrounds impact learning in so many different ways. Also, institutional and interpersonal factors influence learning. For example, schools, state, or federal policies dictate how learning happens in schools. Besides, teachers also enact individual policies in classrooms, and their interactions, attitudes, teaching styles, or training may also impact learning. In turn, individuals who have not experienced or “learned” the learning concepts or topics presented in assessments or classroom assignments, may struggle with learning. These learning struggles, oftentimes limited by institutional, individual, or interpersonal processes, make learning messy. In this mess, humanity may be lost in learning. Some blame the children, others blame the families meanwhile others blame the system. I argue for a better understanding of contextual factors that impact learning. Otherwise, the same groups of students will continue to be “successful” while others “fail.”