Pomona Presenters

Adele Arellano is a professor in the Teaching Credential Single Subject program at CSU Sacramento preparing secondary teachers to teach in diverse California classrooms. She has been active in ERWC and has directed two National Professional Development grants focused on preparing students to be college and career ready. 

Debra Boggs has been in education for nearly 30 years, and involved in ERWC for almost 20. She is the former State Liaison for ERWC and currently works as an ELA/ELD Coordinator for the Merced County Office of Education.

Robby Ching is Professor Emerita from the CSUS English Department and a founding member of the ERWC Task Force. Her recent work has focused on developing ERWC-ELD curriculum and professional learning for grades 6-12.

John R. Edlund is professor emeritus (currently retired) in the English and Modern Languages Department at Cal Poly Pomona. He chaired the task force that created the ERWC in 2003 and served on the Steering Committee from 2004-2018.

Araceli Garcia has been an ELA/ELD teacher for 26 years. She now serves as an ELA TOSA for secondary schools for her district providing instructional support and resources for teachers. She also serves as a workshop facilitator for the Design-Based Learning program for UCLA Center X.

Jennifer Fletcher is a Professor of English at California State University, Monterey Bay, where she coordinates the undergraduate program for future English teachers. Her twenty-eight years of experience in education include a decade as a high school teacher. The author of _Teaching Arguments_ (2015), _Teaching Literature Rhetorically_ (2018), and _Writing Rhetorically_ (2021), Jennifer facilitates workshops and webinars on rhetorical literacy skills for teachers across the country and is a frequent speaker at conferences. She serves as a curriculum developer, workshop leader, and steering committee chair for California State University’s Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum (ERWC), a nationally recognized rhetoric-based literacy initiative. Jennifer tweets @JenJFletcher and blogs at rhetoricalthinking.com.

Christy Kenny-Kitchin is an English teacher at Buena Park High School where she has also served as a Literacy Coach and Curriculum Specialist. She has taught English at the middle school, high school, and college levels. Having written one of the i3 modules ("The Daily Challenge"), she also worked as an academic coach to teachers for the i3 grant. Christy has been leading ERWC professional learning workshops for a decade.

Josh Kunnath, EdD, is an English teacher and instructional coach at Highland High School in Bakersfield, CA. He has spent the last 10 of his 15 years in the classroom focusing on grading and assessment in his practice, research, and coaching/consulting. Over the past three years, he has partnered with teachers and schools across California and remotely across the US to help them implement equitable grading practices. Dr. Kunnath frequently presents on grading and assessment at conferences around California, and he has six publications on the topic.

Karen Lopez has been teaching at William S. Hart High School since 1984 and has served as an ERWC Teacher Leader since the course's inception in 2006. She is the author of the Grade 11 Integrated/Designated ERWC module titled Chance Me: Recognizing Merit designed to prepare students for the CAASPP.

Frank Mata has been teaching for 19+ years. He is involved with racial and social justice work within CTA's cadre team and appointed member of their steering committee for racial justice advocacy. He was recently awarded the 2023 CTA Human Rights Peace & Justice award and also serves as the vice-chair of CTA state council's Civil Rights in Education committee. He is also a board member with CATE and leads their BIPOC affinity spaces. He is the proud father of Benjamin and Ivan, 10 and 6 years old.

Chris Street is a Professor of Secondary Education at Cal State Fullerton, where he has directed the master’s program in secondary education for two decades. Chris has taught English at the middle school, high school, and college levels. His research interests include how teachers and students develop writing identities and the teaching of reading and writing. Dr. Street serves on the statewide ERWC Steering Committee and authored the 12th grade module, Island Civilization. He presents and publishes on issues related to the ERWC, and he has been facilitating ERWC professional learning sessions for teachers since the inception of ERWC, 20 years ago. In this role, he has worked with hundreds of English teachers across California.

Norm Unrau taught high school for 25 years before taking a position in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction at CSU, Los Angles, from which he is now Professor Emeritus. He has been engaged in teaching and research on aspects of literacy for over 30 years and is co-editor of Theoretical Model and Processes of Literacy. He has created modules for ERWC, presented workshops, and currently serves on the Steering Committee.

April Parker, Ed.D. has been teaching ELA for 18 years in LAUSD. She has taught ERWC as well as journalism, AP Lit, Literary Analysis-BIPOC, and theatre arts. She holds a doctorate of Education from USC, master's in curriculum and design from CSUDH, and a bachelor's in psychology from CSULB. Her research and hot topics are aimed at social justice and culturally relevant classroom instruction.

Dr. Marcy Merrill is a professor of Language and Literacy at California State University, Sacramento, and serves as director of the College and Career Readiness Center at CSUS. Dr. Merrill taught high school English for 12 years before becoming a professor at CSUS, where she teaches graduate students and preservice English teachers and serves as the chair of the graduate program in Language and Literacy. Dr. Merrill has been a member of the leadership team for the Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum since 2005.

Glen McClish is Professor and Chair of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State University and currently serves on the ERWC Steering Committee. He is particularly interested in how arguments work (and often don't).

Nearly twenty years as an English teacher, first in middle schools in Japan and since in Southern California public high schools in Bellflower and Garden Grove, Erich has dedicated his time toward providing an equitable education for students. He is teaching ERWC and ELD at Bolsa Grande High School in Orange County and leads ERWC training workshops in Long Beach. When he's not conferring with students in the classroom, Erich is pondering the challenges in public education: equitable grading practices, empowering English language learners in all subjects, and sustainable classroom conditions for writing teachers.

Jen Roberts, NBCT, teaches high school English and is the co-author of Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning. She blogs about the intersection of educational technology and literacy at LitandTech.com.

Christine Snyder, PhD, is a Research Associate at WestEd and the author of the new Grade 8 ERWC-ELD module titled “Growing Up Is…” At WestEd, her projects include providing technical assistance to CDE’s Multilingual Support Division through the Region 15 Comprehensive Center; collaborating with CDE and ETS to design trainings to accompany the upcoming release of the new interim ELPAC; and serving as project director for San Diego County Office of Education’s 2023-2024 professional learning project on culturally sustaining comprehensive ELD.

An Oregonian native and Stanford University graduate, Erin Matheson Ritchie now teaches high school English and coaches debate in Santa Cruz, California, where she works to empower students with rhetorical moves to amplify their voices in real-world contexts.

René M. Rodríguez-Astacio is an Assistant Professor of Secondary English Studies and Adolescent Literacies at California State University, Fresno. His expertise and his research advocate for the representation of Latinx and LGBTQIA+ communities in children’s and young adult literature in the English classroom. He can be contacted at renerodriguez@csufresno.edu.

Dr. Yamil Sárraga-López is a lecturer in the First Year Writing Program and a university coach in the English Single Subject Teaching Credential in the Department of English at CSU Fresno. His work covers teacher professional development, writing, and multiethnic approaches to teaching and learning. He can be contacted through yamil@csufresno.edu.

After graduating from Cal-State Long Beach with a BA in English Education with an emphasis on language and linguistics, Thu Hang Tran began teaching ELA and ELD at a High School in Garden Grove Unified School District. While Vietnamese is her official first language, English has become the language of her consciousness. My desire to teach English is not because she was an avid reader or lover of literature, but because she has a deep love for English's linguistics. With her students, she push for them to understand the "rules" of English, so that they can have fun breaking them.

As an educator, Jacob Whitaker has worked as a high school English teacher, AVID coordinator, and composition and literature professor. Currently, he oversees all tutoring services at California State University, Bakersfield, including our Writing Resource Center. As a student, he was a first-generation college student in a working class family. He experienced, firsthand, the challenges of transitioning to higher education from K-12 as a first generation student and that has motivated him to provide better support experiences for all students.