Emily Bailin (Contributing Editor) is currently a doctoral student at Teachers College at Columbia University studying in the Ed.D. program for Education and Communication. She holds a masters in Education, Culture & Society at University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, which she received in 2010. Her research interests include critical media literacy, multimodal storytelling, and culturally relevant pedagogies.

Mary Ann Chacko (Contributing Editor) is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed her B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from India and an M.A. in Child Studies from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She trained as a teacher in India and worked as a school teacher and a teacher educator in India. Her dissertation examines the Student Police Cadet program implemented in government schools across Kerala, India with a focus on adolescent citizenship and school-community relations. She blogs at: https://chintavishta.wordpress.com

Eun Kyoung Chung (Contributing Editor) is a doctoral candidate in the department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College. She also completed an Ed.M. at Teachers College and a Masters and Bachelors degree in Education in Seoul, South Korea. Chung worked as a Korean language college instructor in Seoul for 6 years before going to the U.S. She is interested in immigrant and multicultural education.

Erica Colmenares (Contributing Editor) is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, Erica graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2004 with degrees in Elementary Education, Spanish Literature and French Language. In 2008 she completed her Masters degree at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She spent several years teaching elementary school in Kuwait and Indonesia. Her research interests include teacher preparation, international education, and intercultural communication/experiences.

Adam Davison (Contributing Editor) began his teaching career as a museum educator at the Museum of the Moving Image, in Long Island City. In 2004 he became a New York City Teaching Fellow, and he has taught middle and high school English for the past ten years, first at Van Arsdale High School and now at Juan Morel Campos Secondary School. He has a Masters of Science in Education from Pace University and is pursuing a second Masters degree at Columbia University’s Summer Principal Academy at Teachers College.

Cati V. de los Ríos (Contributing Editor) is a Ph.D. Candidate in English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and Research Fellow at the Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) in Harlem. She holds a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies and Spanish Literature from Loyola Marymount University, an M.T.S. in Theological Studies and Secondary Education from Harvard University and an Ed.M. in Curriculum & Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. She taught high school Spanish, ELD, and Ethnic Studies courses in California and Massachusetts for six years, Adult ESL classes for four years, and has taught as an adjunct instructor at Mills College, City College New York, and Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include Latina/o youth’s multilingual and multiliterate repertoires, adolescent literacies, im/migration, emergent bilingual learners, critical pedagogy, youth activism, and high school Ethnic Studies. She is also a community organizer and Core member of New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).

Deirdre Faughey (Founding Editor, Publisher) is a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum and Teaching Department at Teachers College, Columbia University.  She thought up the idea for Esteem while considering the interview as a powerful act of literacy that, when incorporated into the high school curriculum, had the potential to transform students from passive to active learners. As a teacher who is also a student, she began to wonder what would happen if doctoral students like herself engaged in their own interviews. Since the voices of students and teachers are mostly absent from the literature, Esteem was imagined as an active site of inquiry, collaboration, and expression, that had the potential to help graduate students rethink their own conceptions of self, while making connections and sharing the knowledge of those who have inspired them to be educators, researchers, scholars, or activists. Deirdre completed a Masters degree in the Teaching of English from Teachers College, and a Bachelors degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Bard College. She is also the Managing Editor of International Ed News, a Research Assistant for the National Center for the Restructuring Education, Schools & Teaching (NCREST), and has taught Masters-level Literacy courses at Hunter College. Contact her at df2145@tc.columbia.edu if you have any questions about Esteem. Visit www.deirdrefaughey.com to learn more about her work.

Estrella Olivares-Orellana (contributing editor) is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the author of “Equitable ways to teach Science to emergent bilinguals and immigrant youth,” which appears in a new collection titled, Excellence through equity: Five principles of courageous leadership to guide achievement for every student. Her scholarly interests are in the areas of bilingual and bicultural education, science education in bilingual settings and the academic experiences of immigrant students. Presently, she is conducting qualitative research with students who have been classified as presenting interrupted formal education. She is also a part-time instructor in the department of Arts & Humanities at Teachers College and a full-time bilingual science teacher at a high school in the suburbs of New York. Estrella holds an Ed.M. in International Educational Development from Teachers College and a B.S. in Biochemistry from SUNY, Stony Brook. She is a native of Chile but lived many years in Argentina before migrating to the U.S. in 1994.

Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos (Contributing Editor) is a second semester Master’s Degree student in the Comparative International Education program with a content concentration in Philosophy.  He recently graduated from Manhattan College, where he majored in Philosophy and minored in Spanish. He also graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and the valedictorian of the 2013 class. His interests include social justice, multicultural education, immigration studies, community development, the bilingual aesthetic experience and philosophies of education.  His work currently reflects the importance of integrating artwork in the classroom as a means of empowering emergent bilingual students. 

Isaac Solano (Contributing Editor) is a second year Masters of Arts candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University. His emphasis is K-12 Education Policy. He has been involved in Education Policy work at various levels.  In 2011, Isaac founded The College Boot Camp Program.  Its purpose is to motivate high-need, inner-city middle school students to apply to college. Since the program’s inception, it has been taught in three different school districts in the metropolitan area of Denver.  It was also recently introduced to a school in the Chicago Public Schools. In the past, he has also interned for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in Washington DC and the Denver Public Schools Foundation.  During these experiences he was responsible for conducting community outreach, managing the alumni profiles and attending congressional briefings on Capitol Hill.  Recently, Isaac has published commentaries in the Washington Post and the North Denver Tribune. Once he finishes his education, Isaac hopes to conduct research on the public schools throughout Metropolitan Denver, and in time run for municipal office. It is no secret that his dream is to be elected mayor of Denver, Colorado.

Tran Templeton (Contributing Editor) is currently a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds a Bachelors in Human Development from The University of Texas at Austin and a Masters in Teaching and Learning from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Tran has previously been a special education teacher, and prior to Teachers College, she served for four years as the Program Director of Colegio Monarch Guatemala, a school for children with neurobehavioral disabilities. Her interests include childhood agency, photographic practices in school, and visual sociology/image-based research.

Laura Vernikoff (Contributing Editor) is a doctoral student in Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds a B.A. in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an M.Ed. in Language and Literacy Education from the Pennsylvania State University. Originally from Flushing, Queens, she has both lived and worked as an educator in four out of five boroughs. The majority of her career has been spent working in New York City’s District 75, the citywide special education district. Her research interests are related to making schools genuinely inclusive of all children.