About Me

I'm an English as a New Language (ENL) and ELA educator, applied linguistics researcher, and education technology designer working at the intersection of language, literacy, and AI. My work centers on one question: how do we design instruction and tools that actually serve multilingual learners, especially those the field too often overlooks?

Educator First

I teach secondary multilingual learners in New York, including newcomers and Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE). My classroom practice is grounded in second language acquisition theory and shaped by frameworks I use daily: comprehensible input and pushed output, translanguaging, task-based language teaching, Universal Design for Learning, and differentiated instruction. I design sheltered instruction that gives students at the Entering and Emerging stages of English proficiency genuine access to grade-level texts and ideas, and a pathway to graduation milestones like the NYS English Regents.

Just as important to me is what students read. I build curriculum around culturally and linguistically sustaining literature, choosing texts in which my students can see their own languages, communities, and experiences reflected.

Researcher and Writer

As a graduate researcher in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, I study L2 vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, and language assessment. My current scholarship examines how AI-assisted reading tools can support vocabulary development for learners the research literature has largely ignored, arguing that the field's dominant theoretical frameworks carry an implicit assumption of print literacy that SLIFE learners specifically do not share. I'm developing this work for publication in peer-reviewed venues in applied linguistics and literacy education.

I also bring an assessment lens to everything I do, from designing construct-valid classroom assessments to critiquing where standard measures introduce construct-irrelevant barriers for multilingual learners and students with disabilities.

Builder

I'm the designer of The Reading Blueprint, an AI-powered reading tool built from the ground up for multilingual learners without assumed print literacy. Where most CALL and AI reading tools inherit an implicit print-literate user, my tool is designed for its absence, with multimodal scaffolds, vocabulary supports mapped to acquisition theory, and features that treat students' full linguistic repertoires as assets. It's both a practical classroom tool and a research instrument for studying how technology can close gaps that traditional instruction hasn't.

What Drives Me

I believe the students hardest to serve with off-the-shelf tools deserve the best-designed ones. Everything I do (teaching, research, and building) comes back to equity of access: to literacy, to language, and to the futures both make possible.

Let's connect if you're working on multilingual education, literacy technology, or AI in the language classroom.