Featured Speakers

Upcoming Featured Speaker

CEEL invites you to an in-person keynote address on May 21, 2025 featuring Dr. Dina Castro, Director for the Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being at Boston University, on "Early Childhood Well-Being in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts".

The number of people leaving their communities in search for a better life for them and their families has increased dramatically during the last twenty years. About 20 percent of the world’s total international migrants live in the United States. One consequence of these migration movements is the increased linguistic and cultural diversity in communities and schools; bilingual/multilingual children are a third of the U.S. child population ages 0-8. This session will focus on the questions: Why should children’s languages, cultures and diverse abilities be considered when seeking to improve quality in early care and education and overall children’s well-being? and how do early educators, administrators and policymakers can work towards reaching this goal? We will discuss interdisciplinary asset-based perspectives to maximize children’s well-being and build resilience in multilingual and multicultural contexts.

About Dr. Dina C. Castro
Dr. Dina C. Castro is director of the Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being and the inaugural Bahamdan Professor in Early Childhood Well-Being at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Her scholarship focuses on equity and quality in the early care and education of bilingual children in immigrant, migrant, and indigenous communities. It is conceptualized at the intersection of language, culture, race, ethnicity, and disability, recognizing the need for interdisciplinary approaches across the fields of early childhood development and education, bilingualism and bilingual education, and special education.

Before joining BU, Dr. Castro was professor and the Velma E. Schmidt Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Education at the University of North Texas (2014–2021). She also held positions at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University (2013-2014), and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, and the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1997-2013). She also served as director of the Center for Early Care and Education Research: Dual Language Learners, a federally funded national research center focused on increasing our understanding of practices and measurement to improve early care and education for bilingual children. Her research has been funded by the Institute of Education Science, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of Special Education Programs.

View the Flyer here: Featured Speaker Flyer

Previous Featured Speaker

On October 10, 2024, CEEL had the privilege of welcoming Dr. Jill Kerper Mora, Associate Professor Emerita from the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University, for a keynote presentation titled "Reaffirming Our Multilingual/Multiliteracies Pedagogical Knowledge Base: Strengthening the Research to Practice Connection".

This workshop centered on transforming the current narrative in multilingual and dual language education by moving beyond the fact-checking of Science of Reading claims and pedagogies. Dr. Kerper Mora presented research-based perspectives and practical strategies that supported educators and enhanced learning outcomes for multilingual students. Through the presentation, educators, administrators, and leaders received insights that challenged current paradigms and advanced literacy instruction for multilingual students. Educators were equipped with knowledge and resources to foster and embrace more inclusive and effective literacy pedagogies for multilingual and dual language students.

Dr. Mora’s career as a biliteracy educator began in Texas where she was an elementary bilingual teacher, a secondary Spanish teacher, and a consultant for the Texas Education Agency’s Region IV Service Center in Houston. She has engaged in scholarship, leadership and teaching as a university teacher educator specializing in preparing teachers for work with culturally and linguistically diverse students in Texas, California, and Mexico. She brings an international perspective to the arena of Spanish language and literacy education. Dr. Mora served as Resident Director of the California State University International Program and Bilingual Teacher Credential Program in Querétaro, Mexico in 2003-2005. While serving the CSU in Mexico, Dr. Mora conducted a comprehensive study of the Mexico National Reading Program reforms with a focus on first grade classrooms with her colleague Diane Taboada.

Dr. Mora has received numerous honors and awards for her activism and scholarship. In 2002, she received the California Association for Bilingual Education Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarly Activity for her MoraModules Website for biliteracy and English language development educators. In 2009, Dr. Mora was recognized with the Promoting Biliteracy Award from the Two-way California Association for Bilingual Education for her strong advocacy for educational equity for language minority students.

In her active retirement, Dr. Mora continues to work as an author of professional books for dual language teachers and as a consulting author with Benchmark Education Company. She maintains her MoraModules Website at moramodules.com. The website includes a Book Companion Website to accompany her textbook Spanish Language Pedagogy for Biliteracy Programs (2016) with Montezuma Publishing. Dr. Mora’s book, co-authored with Silvia Dorta-Duque de Reyes, titled Biliteracy and cross-cultural teaching: A framework for standards-based transfer instruction in dual language programs will be published in January 2025 with Brookes Publishing.

See her presentation here!

We invite you to view highlights from our previous Featured Speakers below.

The Center for Equity for English Learners regularly hosts events where scholars can present on a variety of topics to the larger educational community. These venues provide an opportunity for renowned researchers to share current findings in the field of language, literacy, learning, teacher preparation, and multicultural studies.

CEEL gratefully acknowledges our featured speakers' willingness to allow us to videotape the sessions and highlight them here.