Speaker Bios

Mona Shaath is graduating with an M.A. in Composition from San Francisco State University. Throughout her teaching career at area universities such as the Academy of Art and SFSU, she has invited students into classrooms that are collaborative, multimodal, and challenging. Mona is passionate about engaging her students using both analog and digital approaches to teaching reading and writing. Her pedagogy draws on a social justice perspective informed by an M.A. in Sociology from New York University. Working together with her colleagues, Mona recently completed a chapter about "good writing" for a forthcoming book.

ReJeanne Smith is graduating with his MA in English Composition from San Francisco State University. His graduate work explores Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Culturally Relevant Literature, subjects that are personal to him because of his love for helping students find their voice through reading and composing. He is passionate about empowering students through composition in communities of color. ReJeanne is a Bay Area native and hopes to teach in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Weiyu Su is a passionate and dedicated English language teacher currently finishing a master’s degree in TESOL and the certificates in Reading and Composition at San Francisco State University. Her professional experience includes working with culturally diverse communities. Currently, she works as an embedded tutor at City College of San Francisco, where she helps students improve their language skills and achieve academic success. With a deep interest in second language acquisition and the social dynamics of language use, she plans to continue to research the social and cultural factors that influence English pedagogy in further graduate study.

Jason Nava is completing his M.A. TESOL (Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and he currently teaches English as a Second Language in his hometown of San Francisco. His English teaching career began in 2014 and has seen him teach in both China and Japan. His pedagogy focuses on interactive and collaborative learning that pushes student output. This learner centered classroom aims to serve the needs of students of various backgrounds and learning styles. This year he was the recipient of the TESOL Legacy Scholarship and the TESOL Convention scholarship. 

Kyle Larson is currently a student in the Master of Arts in Linguistics program at San Francisco State University. His B.A. in English Literature and minor in Linguistics are from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He also served in the Peace Corps, in the South Pacific country of Vanuatu where he taught English, directed the library, and tutored students as an English language volunteer. His passion for linguistics grew out of his Peace Corps experience and his research focuses on the unique properties of creole languages. 

Francisco Martin is a graduate student whose passion for languages led him on a journey that eventually earned him a B.A. in English Education from San Francisco State University, and he is currently in the M.A. in TESOL program from the same university. Francisco has worked with numerous students at universities, community colleges, and nonprofit organizations for the last seven years, tutoring pupils with various language and racial backgrounds. He’s also taught conversational English courses to international students at San Francisco State University. During his graduate courses, he developed a keen interest in L2 reading and listening skills.  

Jason Bowers is an MA candidate in Composition Instruction at San Francisco State University. He received a BA in Philosophy from New York University and is a graduate of the Windward Teacher Training Institute, where he learned pedagogical approaches to teaching students with language-based learning differences. His scholarship explores written corrective feedback, contract grading, teacher cognition, and learning differences in composition courses by bringing together research from Composition Studies, TESOL, and educational psychology. He has taught a wide range of subjects, including clowning, middle school math, and first-year college composition. 

Qian Chen is from Shanghai, China and speaks Mandarin Chinese and Shanghainese as a first language. She earned her BA in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other languages at Shanghai Normal University and is completing her MA in TESOL at San Francisco State University. Qian is a language enthusiast and has taught English to adult learners in online settings for six years in China. Her interest is in teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and she hopes to implement peer feedback in Chinese EAP classrooms.

Sara Nuila-Chae is graduating in the M.A. Composition program, building upon her completed M.A. in Literature at SFSU. She received her B.A. in English with a minor in Writing from UC Merced. Because of Sara’s passion for Literature, she is interested in the ways in which literary analysis can be brought into the Composition classroom. Her research interests include contemporary Mixed Race Literature and American Autobiography. She has taught first-year composition courses at SFSU and currently works as a tutor at several community colleges across the Bay Area. 

John Chew is an Instructional Aide working in Skyline Colleges Learning Center where he currently works both in and outside of the classroom as a reading and writing tutor and workshop presenter. John is continuing his education by finishing his M.A. in English Composition after having received his B.A. in English Education from San Francisco State. His research interests include non-traditional students, digital literacy, and student-centered education in composition. He is passionate about advocacy for traditionally marginalized populations within community colleges and practices that staff members can adopt to help them succeed. 

Kouki Tamura is currently finishing his master’s degree in English Composition along with the Certificate in Post-Secondary Reading at San Francisco State, where he also taught first-year composition as a graduate teaching associate in Fall 2022.  Prior to receiving his bachelor’s degree in English at U.C. Berkeley, Kouki worked as a peer tutor at Chabot College in Hayward, CA, where he discovered his passion for working with students to improve their reading and writing ability within the classroom. His professional interests include writing and reading across the curriculum programs and fostering equity and inclusivity practices for non traditional students in the community college classroom. 

Rob

Anne Marie Mattingly is a graduate student at San Francisco State University working on her degree in linguistics. She received her undergraduate from Otterbein University with bachelor degrees in literary studies and creative writing. While originally from Ohio, she moved two and a half years ago during the covin-19 pandemic to the bay area in order to pursue her masters. She is interested in the way in which language is able to be used to shape public perception, and her capstone project will reflect this. 

Connor Fitzpatrick is currently a student at San Francisco State University where he is completing a Master of Arts in Composition. He is deeply passionate about writing and in 2015 he received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California. In his career as an educator, Connor has taught at San Francisco State University as a Graduate Teaching Associate and has worked at Contra Costa College as a writing tutor. Connor wants to give back to his community by working with students to grow as readers, writers, and individuals.

Ramzi ElKawa is graduating with an M.A. in Linguistics and a Certificate in Computational Linguistics from the Department of English Language and Literature. A UC Berkeley Graduate (B.A. Linguistics), he has a wide variety of linguistic interests. Languages he has worked on include Arabic, English, and Hebrew and his main topic foci have been in Syntax, Semantics, Cognitive Linguistics, Gesture and Computational Linguistics.  He has forthcoming work on cognitive gesture in Arabic, written in collaboration with UC Berkeley Professor Eve Sweetser, and he has been part of a research group analyzing metaphor in cancer discourse. He has a special interest in the semantics of Arabic morphosyntax.

Erli Tang is currently working towards her master’s degree in the Linguistic Program at San Francisco State University, and she is working as a teaching assistant in the introduction to linguistics course this semester. She received her B.A. in linguistics and Japanese with honors from the Pennsylvania State University in 2021. With broad experience in experimental methodology, computational linguistics, and psycholinguistics, her major research interests lie in socio-phonetics and indexicality research through the lens of linguistic anthropology. She recently presented her undergraduate honor thesis on how Mandarin influence Shanghainese fricatives at ICDLC8 in March 2023.

Ilya Osovskiy is completing his MA in TESOL at San Francisco State University, where he also holds an MA in English literature and graduate certificates in teaching Composition and Post-Secondary Reading. He continues to invent new approaches for teaching multilingual students of English across literature, composition, and ESOL. He has worked as a tutor at Skyline College, hosting workshops in writing, conversation, and grammar, and as a teacher at San Francisco State. His pedagogical interests include theory of reading, approaching reading from a student’s perspective, and teaching foundations of the literary canon.