Avary Carhill Poza

is the Director of CREATE. She is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at UMass Boston. A community-engaged scholar, Prof. Carhill-Poza has served as the Director of the ESL Licensure Program at UMass Boston and as a board member for the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Research Advisory Council on Multilingual Learners. She has published extensively on the social contexts and social resources of adolescent second language development. She has more than a decade of experience partnering with school districts with high incidence of ELs and mentoring and training pre- service and in-service teachers of ELs. She has served as PI on a Nellie Mae Educational Foundation Grant that explored Student-Centered Learning Opportunities for Adolescent English Learners in Flipped Classrooms and a Spencer Grant on Leveraging the Peer Social Support of Adolescent English Learners for Language Development and Content Learning. She has also developed the English Language Development Graduate Certificate (ELDG) and the Dual Language Graduate Certificate (DLG) currently offered through the Department of Applied Linguistics.

Panayota Gounari

is the Co-Director of CREATE. She is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She has extensive experience in professional development for educators, having designed and implemented training for teachers of English Learners in Massachusetts. Using her background in critical applied linguistics and critical pedagogy, she weaves language, discourse, and policy together with insight from her 20-year career in public higher education to produce socially committed scholarship. Her focus is on critical discourse studies, critical language policy and the politics of language. Her most recent book From Twitter to Capitol Hill: Far-Right Authoritarian Populist Discourses, Social Media and Critical Pedagogy (Brill 2021) explores far-right authoritarian populist discourses in social media in the context of the January 6th insurrection.

Deborah Sercombe

is the Project Coordinator for CREATE. She brings extensive leadership expertise to CREATE having served as Principal in the pioneering Two-Way Immersion Amigos School in Cambridge, MA, and the Title VII Director in the Boston Public Schools. She is a highly qualified educator with years of experience serving ELs and DLs in public schools as a teacher, a supervisor, and an expert consultant. She holds a master's degree in Bilingual Education and credentials in Principal/Leadership Preparation and Administration and Supervision. She has worked extensively with MABENE, the Massachusetts Association for Bilingual Education, Northeast, providing professional development and serving as a program evaluator for Two-Way bilingual programs. She has been a highly sought-after ESL Program Supervisor in the area’s teacher training programs where she has supported training for generations of EL educators.

Vannessa Quintana-Sarria

is the Graduate Assistant at CREATE. She is a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant in the applied linguistics program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She obtained her BA in Foreign Languages with a concentration in English and French from Valle University in Cali, Colombia, and an M.A. in Foreign Languages with a concentration in Spanish from North Carolina State University. Her scholarship explores the experiences of multilingual English language teachers, language teacher identities, and language teacher education. Currently, she is advancing her dissertation data analysis and writing. Vanessas’ work with immigrant students, teachers, and school staff in Boston schools has emphasized the importance of secondary English teachers in adolescent immigrant life. In CREATE Vannessa works closely with the CREATE coordinator, she is also part of the data collecting team and performs the teachers’ walk-ins and coding of them.

Iuliia Fakhrutdinova

is the Navigator at CREATE. She is a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant in the

Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

She obtained her M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Saint Michael’s College, Vermont. Her research focuses on immigrant and refugee populations including such areas as identity, literacy, narratives, and multilingualism. Her dissertation explores the negotiated identities of refugee-background women during resettlement. Iuliia joined CREATE in the Fall 2024 as both a navigator and a researcher. She is involved in advising and navigating CREATE participants regarding the English Language Development (ELD) or Dual Language Graduate Certificates and exploring further pathways through CREATE. Iuliia is also involved in data collection, analysis, and reporting.

OUR TEAM

Jesse Rubio

is a Post-Doctoral Researcher and Adjunct Lecturer in the Applied Linguistics Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston whose research spans a range of questions that center on multilingualism and multilingual individuals in educational settings. In examining discourses that influence language practices and policies in schools, she has sought to better understand how educational language policy is enacted across levels of organization and, in doing so, to inform more equitable experiences for historically marginalized students. Her work as a lecturer likewise aims to guide students in critical inquiry in the field of applied linguistics.

Jesse joined CREATE in Fall 2023 as both a researcher and a coach. She is involved in data collection, analysis, and reporting in her role as a Post-Doctoral Researcher, and she plans and facilitates group and individual coaching with CREATE educators as a Coach. In addition to her work at UMass Boston, Jesse is also currently a Post-Doctoral Associate at the University of Pittsburgh.

Rachel La Russo

is a PhD candidate and Part-time Lecturer teaching CREATE courses in the Applied Linguistics Department at UMass Boston. She has a BA in Romance Languages from the University of Maryland, an MA in Teaching ESL from the InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico, and has taught in diverse contexts including secondary schools in the Baltimore area, an English Village in South Korea, and higher education in Guinea, West Africa. She brings her passion for language pedagogy and her commitment to advancing the rights of multilingual learners to CREATE courses as well as to her dissertation research, which has explored the identities of multilingual students who are placed in ESL classes. In addition to teaching CREATE courses and writing her dissertation, Rachel works in the Boston Public Schools as an instructor for UMass Boston’s Early College program.

CREATE Lecturers

Lisa Alonzo

has been working in the field of ESL since 1997. She began teaching ESL to adults and has worked in a range of settings; teaching ESL to students from elementary school through college. Lisa holds a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics. She also holds Director/Supervisor and Pre-K through 12 Licensure in ESL. Lisa has been a PD provider and SEI Instructor since the inception of the RETELL initiative. She currently works in Haverhill Public Schools as a district-wide Multilingual Learner Education Instructional Coach, and continues to teach SEI/ESL focused courses and workshops across the Merrimack Valley and north shore.

Johanny Canada-Hlatshwayo

was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn, NY. Johanny holds a B.S. in Mathematics with a Minor in Spanish Language and Literature from Stony Brook University, a Master’s in Mathematics Education from Cambridge College, and a Master’s in Instructional Leadership from Harvard. She is an alumna of the Latinos for Education Leadership Program and a member of the International Women’s Writing Guild, where some of her poetry has been published. She has dedicated over two decades to supporting multilingual learners and the Latino community as a teacher, instructional dual language coach, and Assistant Principal. Johanny has been instrumental in developing curriculum and professional development programs that enhance learning for multilingual learners, fostering culturally responsive and inclusive teaching practices.

Her passion for equity and access drives her work, particularly advocating for Latino and multilingual students. Johanny is committed to creating school environments where every student can thrive academically and personally, regardless of language or background.