Dr. David E. Kirkland (@davidekirkland) is a Professor of Urban Education at New York University, where he also serves as Executive Director of The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and The Transformation of Schools. He is an activist and educator, cultural critic and author, and a leading national scholar and advocate for educational justice. While Dr. Kirkland’s work has always centered equity and culturally and linguistically responsive-sustaining education, his most recent work with the NYU Metro Center has focused on supporting instruction responsive to the social, cultural, and emotional needs of linguistically and culturally plural students. Dr. Kirkland taught secondary school and served as a school administrator in Michigan and New York. He has also organized youth empowerment and youth mentoring programs in major U.S. cities and currently leads efforts to enhance education options for vulnerable youth throughout the U.S. Dr. Kirkland has received many awards for his research and educational advocacy work; a full list can be found here. Learn more about Dr. Kirkland by clicking on the following links: “A Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Black Males” "How a Dyslexic Boy Fell in Love with Words" "Elements of Oppression"

Dr. Klaudia M. Rivera is a Professor of Education at Long Island University Brooklyn. Her teaching, research and publications focus on literacy and biliteracy, language and educational policy, and the practice of popular education and participatory research. She has more than twenty years of experience applying critical pedagogy, participatory and popular education, and developing education programs at the community-based and university levels. These programs foster bilingualism and biliteracy and promote equity by honoring research-based and practitioner knowledge and by integrating education and community organizing. In addition to her record designing innovative programs and curricula, Dr. Rivera has extensive experience providing training and technical assistance to local, national, and international educational programs at the community-based and higher education levels. Her research aims to challenge linguistic discrimination and educational disenfranchisement and to promote equity through educational excellence. Dr. Rivera’s co-edited book, “Adult biliteracy: Sociocultural and programmatic responses,” addresses the relationship between language and biliteracy in different educational contexts and spaces. Her latest research focuses on the importance of university-based teacher preparation that is grounded in linguistic, culturally and socially sustaining practices and the role of Worker Centers and popular education in providing education and improving the lives of day laborers.

Dr. Lucía Cárdenas Curiel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. She is a former enrichment specialist at a bilingual elementary and middle school in Monterrey, Mexico and middle and high school Spanish teacher in New York City. Her research examines the conditions that allow emergent multilingual language learners (EMLLs) to succeed academically in elementary schools. Lucia’s research has centered on pedagogical spaces supporting EMLLs biliteracy development by focusing on multimodal texts read and taken up inside the school curriculum. In particular, the documentation of ways bilingual teachers not only use traditional (e.g. written and oral), but also multimodal texts (e.g. visual, gestures, realia, etc.) to build equitable linguistic and cultural (bi)literacy practices in different disciplines. She was the 2018 winner of the National Association of Bilingual Education Dissertation Award. Her work contributes by looking at the intersection between pedagogical knowledge, literacies, and linguistic repertoires. This intersection allows engagement from the classroom, to teacher education programs, and research and theory. Dr. Cárdenas Curiel was selected as a research fellow by the National Council of Teachers of English in the Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color program from 2018 to 2020. Her work has been published at Reading Research Quarterly, Bilingual Research Journal, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, and Journal of Multilingual Education Research. She served as assistant editor of the Journal of Teacher Education and associate editor for The Reading Teacher. She currently serves as an advisor of the Second Language and Bilingual Education Higher Education Advisory Council with the Michigan Department of Education.