Joyce W. Nutta began her fascination with second languages before elementary school, listening to French- and Spanish-speaking tourists at her parents’ ten-unit motel in west central Florida. In the ninth grade, she and her parents moved to a small town in the Dolomites of Italy, where she was enrolled in an Italian-speaking high school even though she knew nothing of the language or culture. She spent two years in the ninth grade and although her social language developed by the end of her second year, she was unable to pass the rigorous essay exams of academic subjects and language arts in Italian and returned to Florida to continue high school. After volunteering to help immigrant students learn English in her academic classes, she began her profession as an English as a second language teacher and eventually a teacher educator. She earned teaching certification followed by a master’s degree in applied linguistics and a PhD in second language acquisition/instructional technology. She is currently professor of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Education and the ESOL endorsement and TESOL PhD track coordinator at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests include the integration of English learner issues into teacher preparation and professional learning and the use of technology to teach second languages. Nutta has received over $7,000,000 in research and training grants. Her research has been published in the Journal of Teacher Education, Hispania, Foreign Language Annals, TESOL Journal, and CALICO Journal, among other publications.
Carine Strebel is assistant professor of education and coordinator of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) at Stetson University. A native of Switzerland who spent the first three years of school in Paris, she pays tribute to her parents for sparking her love for different cultures and language learning. While fulfilling field experience hours in an elementary classroom, she noticed a tiny girl sitting by herself in the back of the room, largely ignored by the teacher and classmates, and instinctively selected her to be the focus of her case study (although the teacher warned she would not “get enough out of it” to earn a good grade on the assignment). Although communication proved to be difficult, the experience was powerful and rewarding. The two grew close as they worked on below-grade-level vocabulary and math problems, and at the end of the semester their goodbyes were difficult. While teaching French and German in the United States, Strebel’s thoughts repeatedly returned to this girl, and she decided to help immigrant children become successful in American schools by becoming a teacher educator. Strebel holds a master’s degree in French and a PhD in instructional technology with a focus in ESOL, and has experience mentoring practicing teachers around the world online on the implementation of language learning technologies. She has coauthored previous books with Harvard Education Press, is a cofounder and coeditor of The Tapestry Journal: An International Multidisciplinary Journal on English Language Learner Education, and serves on the advisory board for a US Department of Education grant. Her current research focuses on preservice teachers’ development of self-efficacy of teaching English learners, assessment of and feedback to preservice teachers’ field experience teaching performance, and faculty and teacher professional development.
Florin M. Mihai grew up in Iasi, Romania. In second grade, he started learning English and became fascinated by it. After he earned a BA in English and Romanian from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iasi, he taught English as a foreign language at a private language school in his hometown for several years. Because he wanted to further his education and pursue a postgraduate degree, he enrolled in the Multilingual and Multicultural Education program at Florida State University, where he earned a master’s and a PhD. His research interests include language and content-area assessment for English learners, grammar instruction, pre- and in-service teacher education, and curriculum development in global contexts. He is the author of Assessing English Language Learners in the Content Areas: A Research-into-Practice Guide for Educators (2nd ed., University of Michigan Press, 2017) and a coauthor of Course Design for TESOL: A Guide for Integrating Curriculum and Teaching (University of Michigan Press, 2016), Educating English Learners: What Every Classroom Teacher Needs to Know (Harvard Education Press, 2014), and Language and Literacy Development: An Interdisciplinary Focus on English Learners with Communication Disorders (Plural Publishing, 2012). Mihai is a coeditor of The Tapestry Journal: An International Multidisciplinary Journal on English Language Learner Education. Currently, he is professor and director of the TEFL undergraduate certificate in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program at the University of Central Florida.
When Edwidge Crevecoeur Bryant immigrated to the United States from Haiti with her family, she had no idea what awaited her. Upon arriving in New York, in the winter, she expected neither to see “white things” fall from the sky that caused her toes to feel numb nor to ride to school on a noisy bus with children laughing and talking instead of walking! Even more startling, she did not expect to paint all day, every day, while the other students did work that she had previously done in Haiti. She could not understand the language but knew she could do the work if the teacher just gave her a chance. At the age of seven, during one of those “painting in the back of the classroom” moments, she decided that she would become a teacher to help students who could not speak English. Taught English by her father, she became that teacher! Crevecoeur Bryant was the first student in the United States to earn a BS in bilingual education with an emphasis in Haitian Kreyòl and English; she then earned a master’s degree in educational administration and an EdD in applied linguistics with an emphasis in bilingual/ bicultural education. She has coauthored five bilingual English-Haitian Kreyòl dictionaries, serves as codirector of five literacy centers in Petit Goâve, Haiti, and is the educational director of the Technology and English Learning in Leogane Project in Haiti. Crevecoeur-Bryant has devoted her career to improving the lives of English learners through directly teaching ESOL as well as undergraduate and graduate students. She is an associate professor, ESOL coordinator, and director of the Collaborative Online Mentoring Partnership for English Learners program in the Education Department at Flagler College.
Kouider Mokhtari grew up in Morocco, a multilingual country, where he learned to read in two languages: Arabic and French. Outside of school, he spoke Moroccan Arabic, which is a colloquial version of Modern Standard Arabic that is rarely written or used in any formal communication. His fascination with the nature of language and its role in learning to read and write intensified in the first year of high school when he started learning English. After completing teacher certification, he taught English as a foreign language in high school in Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco. He earned a master’s degree in applied linguistics and an interdisciplinary doctorate from Ohio University. His research focuses on the acquisition of language and literacy by first and second language learners, with particular emphasis on children, adolescents, and adults who can read but have difficulties with reading comprehension. Mokhtari is a coauthor of Preparing Every Teacher to Reach English Learners: A Practical Guide for Teacher Educators and Educating English Learners: What Every Classroom Teacher Needs to Know (both with Harvard Education Press). He is a coeditor of The Tapestry Journal: An International Multidisciplinary Journal on English Language Learner Education (Harvard Education Press), which is dedicated to the advancement of research and instruction for English learners. He currently serves as the Anderson-Vukelja-Wright Endowed Professor of Education within the School of Education at the University of Texas at Tyler, where he engages in research, teaching, and service initiatives aimed at enhancing teacher practice and increasing student literacy achievement outcomes.
