Our Teacher Leaders
Andrew Brown is a fifth grade general education teacher in Maspeth, Queens who supports diverse groups of emergent bilinguals by applying translanguaging pedagogy in an English as a New Language model. He has been working as a NYC public school teacher since 2008.
Visit Andy’s page to see examples of student work, anchor charts, slide shows, and to learn more about his strategies.
Charene Chapman-Santiago is an 8th grade English Language Arts teacher in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She works to create classroom community among her teen students, who speak English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Arabic, and varieties of Fulani.
Visit Charene’s page to watch a video about how she builds empathy with her students, and for a step-by-step guide to a technology-infused unit she implemented with her students.
Gladys Y. Aponte is currently a Research Assistant with the CUNY-NYSIEB project and a doctoral student at the CUNY-Graduate Center in Urban Education. Previously, she was a 4th grade dual language bilingual teacher in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Visit Gladys’ page to watch a series of videos that captures a whole translanguaging literacy lesson and to follow her planning process.
Hulda Yau has been working for the Rochester City School District (RCSD) since 2003. She is currently a 2nd-grade bilingual teacher in a one-way dual language bilingual integrated classroom, where she has pioneered techniques that leverage her students’ language backgrounds as resources in their learning.
Visit Hulda’s page to watch videos of her guiding students to leverage translanguaging to learn about idiomatic expressions, to deconstruct sentences, and develop vocabulary in two languages.
Dr. Maeva López-Kassem is a bilingual education coach for the Division of Multilingual Education in the Buffalo Public School (BPS) District. She has worked for the district since 2012 in the roles of Pre-K Dual Language teacher and bilingual education teacher. In years prior, Maeva worked in the Bilingual Education Program at the University at Buffalo (UB) and the Antilles Consolidated School System (DoD) in Puerto Rico. Throughout her educational career in teaching emergent bilinguals (EBs), Maeva has embraced child-centered, constructivist practices that celebrate her students’ languages and cultures.
Visit Maeva’s page to watch a series of videos that captures a whole translanguaging literacy unit and to follow her planning process.
Michelle Demeroukas teaches at the Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies. Along with her role teaching English as a New Language (ENL) courses, Michelle co-teaches courses such as English Language Arts, Global History Prep, and Participation in Government and Economics. She focuses on reciprocal teaching in her classroom, positioning herself as a language learner along with her students. Visit Michelle’s page to watch a series of videos that captures a whole translanguaging literacy unit and to follow her planning process.
Visit Michelle’s page to watch a series of videos that captures a whole translanguaging literacy unit and to follow her planning process.
Sunisa (Nisa) Nuonsy teaches 11th and 12th grade English Language Arts at the International High School at Prospect Heights. She attributes her passion for multilingual learning to her own experiences as an immigrant, refugee, and English language learner. Her students, all of whom are relatively new to the United States, remind her of herself and her family members. Nisa identifies as a lifelong language learner and models this stance for her students.
Visit Nisa’s page to watch a series of videos that captures a whole translanguaging literacy unit and to follow her planning process to see two lesson snapshots from a larger unit Nisa conducted on Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston