My research and teaching focus on bilingual and immigrant education in the United States and Mexico. As an anthropologist of education who conducts ethnographic research across Latin@ immigrant children’s schools, homes, and communities, I critically engage in promoting school-based learning that better recognizes and builds upon young children’s mobile and heterogeneous resources. This includes the traditional and innovative bilingual language and literacy skills that are rarely recognized in their monolingual classrooms and knowledges that they develop related to their immigration experiences. Rather than positioning these educational resources as unwelcome or dangerous for learning, I seek to bring attention to the ways that we can productively contribute to policies, educational practices, and teacher preparation that recognize bilingualism and immigration experiences—including undocumented status—as axes of difference that must be supported for effective and equitable schooling.

My research on Mexican immigrant fathers and their children in an emerging Latino immigrant community during a period of strong anti-immigrant sentiment was supported by the National Science Foundation in Cultural Anthropology and the Spencer Foundation. Mi Padre: Mexican Immigrant Fathers and Their Children’s Education (2017) centers on this research and is available from Teachers College Press.

I am currently conducting ethnographic research in Mexican public schools to better understand the ways that deportation-based immigration policies shape young children’s educational realities across geopolitical borders. This research was supported by the Fulbright U.S. Scholars program in Mexico and the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundations.

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. I am a faculty member in two areas of study: Language, Education, & Society (LES) and Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education (MESE). I am also an affiliated faculty member in Latino/a Studies, the Center for Latin America Studies, and the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy.

If you are interested in research with with bilingual students, please contact me or visit The Buckeye Childhood Bilingualism Research Lab

At OSU I have taught:

• EDUTL 5370: Language and Literacy Development and Instruction for Bilingual Learners (Reading Endorsement, Bilingual Education Endorsement)
• EDUTL 6303: Linguistic Diversity in Education (MA)
• EDUTL 6808: Multicultural & Global Perspectives on Teaching & Learning (MA)
• EDUTL 7344: Bilingualism & Biliteracy (MA, & PhD)
• EDUTL 7431: Ethnography of Literacy and Language Part 1 (PhD)
• EDUTL 7432: Ethnography of Literacy and Language Part 2 (PhD)
• EDUTL 8001: Discourse Analysis in Education Research (PhD)
• EDUTL 8003: Theorizing & Researching Teaching & Learning (PhD)
• EDUTL 8890: Ethnography of Literacy & Related Perspectives on Researching Literacies (Co-taught, PhD)
• EDUTL 8890: Latin@ and Immigrant Perspectives in Education (PhD)