The Speakers

Cody Summerville is the Executive Director of the Texas Association for the Education of Young Children (TXAEYC), a professional membership association that works to advance early childhood education and the early childhood workforce across Texas. He began his career as a kindergarten teacher and has served in a variety of roles within the early childhood programs, state government, and educational technology, each providing a unique opportunity to support the quality of early childhood education. During his time at the Texas Education Agency, Cody led the implementation of the Preschool Development Grant Birth-Five, which increased coordination and collaboration across multiple state agencies with early childhood programming and engaged over 10,000 Texans in statewide strategic planning efforts. Most recently, Cody served as the Senior Content Expert at Hatch Early Learning where he was responsible for designing child facing technology that supported data-driven instruction in prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms. In addition to professional roles, Cody has served in several leadership roles such as Chair of NAEYC’s Young Professionals Advisory Council and Board Member for TXAEYC.

Angela Owens holds a Ph.D. in Teaching, Learning, & Culture with an emphasis in Literacy & Bi-Literacy Education from the University of Texas at El Paso. She has earned dual Master’s Degrees as an Instructional Specialist in Early Childhood and in Educational Administration. Dr. Owens instructs early childhood and special education teacher candidates at New Mexico State University and is the Director of the New Mexico State University Glass Family Research Institute for Early Childhood Studies. Her research interests include caregiver experiences with the special education process, early childhood education, and inclusivity for all children including those from minoritized and diverse identities. Her experiences range from teaching in daycare through elementary settings, special education environments, as a professional development consultant, a liaison for families who have children with special needs, and an elementary campus administrator. Her expertise lies in collaborating with stakeholders in education and surrounding borderland local communities, thinking of innovative ways to develop programs informed by qualitative and quantitative data. Dr. Owens can be contacted at avowens@nmsu.edu.

Shari Zimmer has been an Implementation Specialist with Really Great Reading since 2010. She joined the RGR team after working at a Regional Education Cooperative in Northeastern NM specializing in 21st Century Classrooms from 2005-2010. Prior to that, she was a teacher for twenty years. She is passionate about helping teachers develop a deeper sense of the “Science of Reading” and strives to share “best practices” to help emerging, developing, and struggling readers succeed. She is a firm believer that when “teachers know better, they do better.” She earned a bachelors degree from Bowling Green State University in Special Education, and a Masters in 21st Century Technology from New Mexico State University. She lives on a small ranch in Northeastern NM and can be contacted through email at Shari.zimmer@rgrco.com.

Dr. Christine Althoff professional experiences include serving as a Cohort Leader for the TEA K-3 Texas Reading Academies, Director of Academic Instruction & School Support at ESC19 and professional development consultant at local regional, state & national levels in the areas of curriculum & instruction, teacher certification training, and early childhood instruction. She is currently serving as the principal at Anthony Elementary School.

Mary L. Fahrenbruck is an associate professor in the School of Teacher Preparation, Administration and Leadership at New Mexico State University. Her scholarship and teaching center around global children’s literature, access to literacy, and preservice teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of how children develop as literate beings. She has published in Childhood Education Journal, Journal of Children’s Literature, and other literacy journals. She serves on the Executive Board of the Worlds of Words: Center of Global Literacies and Literatures, and as co-editor of WOW Stories: Connections from the Classroom. She also chairs the Standing Committee on Global Citizenship within NCTE. She is an avid and unapologetic reader of children’s picture books.

Violet Henderson is a college assistant professor in the School of Teacher Preparation, Administration, and Leadership at New Mexico State University. She taught at the elementary school level for almost ten years before entering higher education and considers herself a teacher at heart. Her teaching and research interests include multiliteracies, adult and family literacy, community cultural wealth, funds of knowledge, literacy pedagogies, translanguaging, and literacy portraiture. She has published in The Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and other academic journals. She collaborates with preservice and in-service teachers within the Teacher Education Program and the Bilingual Education/TESOL Program.

Cynthia A. Wiltshire is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Texas at El Paso. Dr. Wiltshire’s work examines the relationships that exist between teachers and children in early childhood education classrooms. Specifically, her work investigates associations between teacher stress, teacher warmth, and children's outcomes in socioemotional and cognitive development.

Claudia De Anda holds a Master’s degree in Reading Education, she is a licensed Reading Specialist, she’s a proud graduate of UTEP having earned her Bachelor’s degree in Special Education and Master of Reading Education and of St. Thomas Aquinas University in Houston having earned her certification in Administration. Ms. De Anda has been in education for over 23 years, her experience range from Elementary as a Special Education and Dyslexia teacher, to Middle School where she was the 7th and 8th grade Reading teacher, AVID Elective teacher, AVID coordinator and Instructional Coach and as a Professional Consultant serving the Region 19 area. At the present time, Ms. De Anda serves the Anthony ISD community as the Elementary Reading Specialist and Dyslexia teacher.

Silvia Zacarias has been an educator for 17 years. She has served as a Kinder bilingual teacher, Instructional Specialist, Consultant at the Education Service Center-Region 19, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is presently working as the Early Childhood Instructional Specialist at Tornillo Independent School District as well as a consultant supporting districts and the Education Service Center Region 19. Mrs. Zacarias has been involved in writing for the Texas Resource Review with the Texas Education Agency among other projects. She is also a national and international consultant in the areas of Early Childhood Education and English Language Acquisition. She has a master’s degree from Sul Ross University. Mrs. Zacarias is a Reading Academies Cohort Leader by the State of Texas and is a Certified Reading Specialist. She is currently a PhD candidate at the New Mexico State University.

Dr. Reynaldo Reyes is an Associate Professor in the College of Education at the University of Texas at El Paso, where for almost 17 years he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Bilingual, ESL, and Multicultural Education. He is the Founder and Director of the MENTE Project, which aims to provide envisioning opportunities and experiences to students, families, and communities from migrant, immigrant, agricultural/farmworker, and homeless backgrounds through university-based educational and empowerment events with support from and collaboration with a network of educators, advocates, and stakeholders. Dr. Reyes has written on the nuances and humanization that are revealed in the act of grading student work. He also has published on the role of service-learning and presence and proximity in humanizing pedagogy in high-needs communities and schools for future and in-service educators of English language learners/emergent bilinguals. He is the creator of a mini-documentary on his teacher education service-learning projects in the Segundo Barrio area of El Paso, titled Future Teachers Changing Lives Now on the Border (YouTube), which he has presented at national conferences. In 2010 he won the University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teacher Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching, one of the most competitive teaching awards for college professors in the United States. In 2012, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholar Award to Pontificia Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile. Dr. Reyes was also awarded the 2014 American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Critics’ Choice Book Award for his book, Learning the Possible: Mexican American Students Moving from the Margins of Life to New Ways of Being.