My educational praxis threads the visual and multimodal with high-impact teaching strategies to create innovative and joyful opportunities for ALL learners. It is where arts integration intersects with high-stakes academic settings to attend to the diverse and complex social, emotional, and academic health and success of ALL students. 

Committed to the belief that all learning communities hold knowledge grounded in unique lived experiences, I leverage and uplift those assets for achieving transformational and measurable outcomes. Whether designing district instructional focus statements that evoke unity of purpose or conducting program evaluation and needs assessments in areas of language and literacy, compliance, access, and achievement for multilingual learners (especially "long-term English learners") and students with diverse learning modalities, I make use of participatory and asset-based approaches for professional learning and ongoing coaching at leadership and classroom levels. A results-oriented approach coalesces community purpose and advocacy, multiple points of data, culturally sustaining teaching and learning practices, and creative approaches to recruit stakeholders' hearts and minds for continued growth.

My illustration work includes poster art, children's books, comics and cartoon art, and various commissioned projects.

As a teatrista (multihyphenate theatre-maker), I step into various roles to bring plays to life. These include set design, costume design, scenic painting, puppeteering, and acting. My work is grounded in participatory approaches that meticulously attend to the playwright’s intentions while also threading the unique nuances of each individual in the production ensemble. The result is a visual experience that not only reflects the stories but also the identities of those who bring the stories to life.

Constraints never limit artists. They challenge them to see things others may not see. The breakthroughs that happen when artists reimagine the status quo have the power to disrupt lackluster outcomes with new opportunities and expanded access. 

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, language support services for multilingual learners were dismally suspended. I resolved to find a way for teachers to connect with their students through language-rich and meaningful exchanges. I designed a meticulously scaffolded and image-rich approach that activated visual literacies to elicit productive language in ways that honored students' multiple perspectives and linguistic registers. This work led me to co-found an ed-tech startup and design a software tool that formatively assesses language development in speaking and writing through art and multimodal literacies. The software was developed in the field with student and teacher participation, asynchronously and eventually in-person, and was informed by my decades-long work as a teacher and educational consultant supporting communities grappling with how to address the acute needs of their multilingual learners. My innovative assessment design and teacher-friendly analytics addressed the dynamic teaching and learning processes and relationships between teachers and students to meet everyone where they are in their understanding of language development and create actionable and sustainable growth. The software has been proven effective in raising student achievement by a third-party evaluator and is currently used throughout the United States. Need a fresh approach?

My YPARt (arts-based and youth participatory action research) approaches employ comics and art to disrupt deficit ideologies and achieve transformational outcomes for youth. My research also explores loophole pedagogies across policies and assessments, and the use of art to elevate youth voices and increase access to rich linguistic nourishment. As a founding teacher and instructional leader at a charter high school, I conducted research on the impact of critical visual literacy and explicit academic vocabulary instruction for boosting literacy skills to access grade-level content and increase student achievement in Global History and Geography, as measured by the New York State Regents Exam. Overall, my proven track record of success in student pass rates across various standardized tests rejected deficit test-prep pedagogies and centered affirming high-impact strategies. Emboldened with critical consciousness, students took offensive stances to pass their tests ON THEIR TERMS.