Jen Russo began her career teaching in New York City working specifically as a special education teacher, in a variety of settings, and with students learning English before joining the Teachers College Reading and writing Project eight years ago. During her tenure as a teacher she developed reading curriculum for a variety of grade levels and supported teachers as a mentor.

As a senior staff developer, she supports grades K-6 in New York City based schools and across the country. In addition to working with individual schools Jennifer also supports district wide initiatives and leads summer institute teams.

Jennifer enjoys working alongside administrators, coaches, and lead teachers to develop school wide goals to improve student achievement and teacher practice. Several of her schools have experienced significant gains in reading achievement across grades throughout their partnership. Across the school year she leads groups of administrators and coaches at institutes, cohorts of coaches in yearlong study groups to improve teacher practice, and think tanks of teachers and colleagues around a variety of topics ranging from Supporting Transitional Readers to Uncovering Reading Difficulties and Designing Interventions.

She is a co-author of The How-To Guide for Nonfiction Writing, Grade 2 as well as Word Builders part of the Grade 1 phonics curriculum by TCRWP. Jennifer also uses her background in graphic design to support visual learning for students – which means a lot of chart making!

Lucía Rocha-Nestler was a dual language teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years before joining the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. She pioneered the implementation of a balanced approach to teaching literacy in Spanish in schools across the pacific northwest and elsewhere. Lucía has supported many dual language and bilingual schools and classrooms across the county. During her tenure as a teacher, she led many professional development opportunities for teachers across her district and elsewhere. She was a teacher mentor and instructional coach working alongside both new and veteran teachers.

Lucía enjoys working alongside dual language and bilingual schools and programs--thinking about how to both grow their language program and literacy instruction to support bilingual and biliteracy in their schools. Her schools have demonstrated huge gains in both language and literacy achievement throughout the country.

Lucía was also a faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Education STEP program, supporting bilingual teacher candidates in their development as early teachers. She holds a masters degree in bilingual teaching and education from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Master of Education in Education Leadership from Teachers College at Columbia University.