Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation

Bio: Dr. Carla Amaro-Jiménez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). As an experienced bilingual education teacher and educator, she now works with pre- and in-service teachers as well as administrators who work with English learners and their families. Her research focuses on the intersections between teacher preparation, classroom instruction, and family involvement to identify additive practices to support English learners and Hispanic students in diverse 21st century classrooms. She also served as the Director of the Pathways to College Access and Career Readiness Program for almost a decade; Pathways included the implementation of UTA-manned GO Centers at 24 area high schools, early college experiences, and parent/community outreach.

Research Interests: Multi-tiered systems of support and equity, disproportionality, equity, behavioral disorders : Ambra L. Green, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Special Education within the College of Education at The University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Green is a national scholar with publications and research focused on students of color with and at-risk for disabilities, issues related to inequitable school practices experienced by students of color (i.e., disproportionality in special education and discipline practices), behavior disorders, positive behavioral interventions and supports, and teacher use of evidence-based practices. She is the Primary Investigator on a $1.1 million U.S. Department of Education Office for Special Education Programs (OSEP) personnel preparation grant which provides rigorous training for master’s special education and social work students to support K-12 students with disabilities and high intensity needs. Dr. Green also has experience working within the U.S. Department of Education Office for Special Education Programs (OSEP) and serves on the OSEP National Technical Assistance Center on PBIS Equity workgroup  Dr. Green was a special educator at the middle school level and a PBIS Coach. She holds current teacher certifications in EC-6 Generalist, 4-8 Generalist, and EC-12 Special Education in the state of Texas. 

Research Interests: Teacher education, postsecondary literacies, digital literacies, and underserved student populations.

Bio: Robin Jocius is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and an Associate Professor of Literacy Studies in the College of Education. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on teacher learning and children and adolescents’ interactions with digital media and she has collaborated on several grants to support teachers in integrating making and computational thinking into their classrooms. Her teaching and research interests include teacher professional development, computer science education, multimodal composing, and Making.

Bio: Dr. Candace Joswick is an associate professor of mathematics education and the director of Advanced EC12 masters programs in the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation.

Bio: Dr. Taylor Kessner is a social studies teacher educator, learning scientist, and games scholar. His research focuses on the design of social studies-themed simulations and (video)games as participatory practice spaces in which learners develop fluency with the disciplinary knowledge, skills, and concepts of the social studies as tools for taking informed civic action.

Bio: Dr. Christopher Kribs is Distinguished Teaching Professor and Distinguished Research Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington, where he has held a joint appointment in Mathematics and Curriculum & Instruction since 1997. He developed and has directed UTA's graduate program in K-8 mathematics education since 2000, which has offered professional development to over 200 local K-8 teachers. His research interests in mathematical biology include modeling vector-borne diseases and zoonoses. His research interests in mathematics education include classroom discourse analysis and the learning and teaching of operations on rational numbers.

Bio: I am an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation for the Accelerated Online Principal Certification and M. Ed. programs. As an educator of 33 years, I served as a teacher for 10 years and a school principal for 16 years at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, with the most recent assignment as principal at a high school in Dallas ISD. I also served as a district level administrator for 2 years in an east Texas school district. Prior to the principalship, I served as a project manager for Site-Based Decision Making at the Region 19 Educational Service Center in El Paso.

Bio: Dr. John Romig is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation in the College of Education. A former classroom teacher, Dr. Romig earned his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia with a concentration in special education where his research and teaching focused on writing assessment and writing instruction. Dr. Romig is especially interested in using assessment data to make instructional decisions and teaching struggling students to read and write.

Bio: Wideline Seraphin, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Studies within the Department of Teacher and Administrator Preparation in the College of Education. Her work explores the intersections of race, gender, immigrant status, and language diversity in the literate lives of Black transnational girls. As a teacher educator, Dr. Seraphin examines socially justice teaching pedagogies. She is the co-founder of Community Narratives in Focus, a narrative inquiry and digital archive centering historically excluded families in K-12 and higher education. Dr. Seraphin has been named an Emerging Scholar by the Haitian Studies Association, earned a 2020 Curriculum Inquiry Writing Fellowship, and is a proud member of the BeyHive.

Teaching Interests: Through this service-learning experience, prospective teachers read aloud to English language learners from working poor families, and the children received a tote bag of the books read aloud at the family literacy event each semester.