Nicole Shimizu, a lifelong educator, fitness fanatic, home chef, and proud mother of two, was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. Nicole’s maternal and paternal grandparents eventually settled in Seattle after Japanese Incarceration during WWII. While Nicole was raised fully immersed in Seattle’s Japanese community, her community’s painful history as well as the roots of anti-Blackness in the Japanese community were topics that were never discussed. While these gaps in history created confusion and a sense of loss for Nicole as a child, she now sees how these gaps have fostered curiosity into understanding her history through the experiences of her elders and understanding the impacts of intergenerational trauma.

Nicole understood first-hand the severe costs of the loss of primary language. During and post WWII, her family lost the Japanese language in their attempt to prove they were “American”. Her inability to speak Japanese was a barrier to connecting with her grandparents. Nicole, not wanting her students to experience the same loss, began learning about Additive Bilingualism - supporting her students in maintaining their home language while adding English as an additional language. In her work as a Multilingual Learner teacher, coach, and curriculum developer, she began to see the impact of the intersection of race and language in the racial predictability of English language development in US Schools.

Since her start as a classroom teacher, Nicole has also served as an English Language Learner (ELL) Coach, Professional Developer, Course Developer and Instructor for Seattle University, Curriculum Developer, blogger, and consultant for Education Impact Exchange, Efficacy Consulting, Project GLAD®, CollegeBoard, and more. Nicole is currently serving as ELL Consulting Teacher for Seattle Public Schools, serving some of the same schools she attended as a child. In 2018, Nicole joined Pacific Educational Group as an Affiliate Coach traveling the country to engage educators and city leaders in Courageous Conversations about Race. As an Asian educator, Nicole is deeply passionate about the intersection of Race and Emergent Bilinguals of Color and racial and linguistic disproportionality in Special Education.