Committee Members - #TEXLER2019

Meet the TexLER Committee

The Texas Language Education Research (TexLER) Conference Committee is a student organization comprised of undergraduate, Master's and Ph.D. students of the Department of Bicultural & Bilingual Studies and TESOL in the College of Education and Human Development.

Committee Members

Kathryn I. Henderson is the faculty advisor for TexLER. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies, College of Education and Human Development at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Her education interests include language ideologies, language policy and dual language bilingual education programs.

Judith Orsini, is the President of the TexLER 2019. She holds a B.A. in Elementary Education with a Major in Special Education from the University of Puerto Rico. Most of her teaching experience has been with students at the elementary level with Autism and other learning and related disorders. Currently, she is a Master’s student of the Bicultural-Bilingual Education Department, working for the Bilingual Teaching Certification and Bilingual Reading Specialist Certificate. Her research interests focus on sociocultural aspects for literacy instruction, bilingual education, race, identity, and language maintenance, and parent involvement in bilingual education.

Krystal Kurtz is the Vice President of the 2019 TexLER committee. She is a high school Spanish teacher by day, and a second year TESOL master's student by night. Krystal has been a Spanish teacher here in San Antonio for the past two years, and also served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Madrid, Spain during the 2016-17 school year. Her research interests include language attrition among heritage speakers of Spanish, central Texas educational policy with regards to ELL students, and pedagogical strategies to facilitate speaking and listening in the language classroom.

My name is Martha Zapata, I was born in Mexico City and I'm currently a student at UTSA working on my bachelors on Bilingual Education. I've worked with children for a long time already but I have a special interest in working with bilingual children. I believe those children are still being underrepresented and in some cases undermine that is why I'm always looking for new ways to address their needs.

Nguyen is the Academic Coordinator of the TexLER Committee. He is a first-year Ph.D. student in Culture, Literacy, and Language at UTSA. Before moving to San Antonio, worked as an ESL teacher in Vietnam. Then he earned his M.Ed. in Curriculum & Instruction from University of Houston. His research interests include language learning, literacy practices, and identity among Vietnamese Americans.

Shiyi Sandra Han is an undergraduate student majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies at UTSA. Her current position in TexLER is UTSA Networking/Volunteer. In her spare time, she likes swimming, playing the ukulele, and the harmonica, traveling, and singing. She is bilingual and fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese. Shiyi is passionate about tutoring people on different subjects.

Christian Fallas Escobar holds a B.A. in TESOL and an M.A. in Second Languages and Cultures from Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. Currently, he is a first-year student in the doctoral program in Culture, Literacy and Language at UTSA. His research interests revolve around society and institutions’ evaluations of individuals’ bilingualism based on racial categorizations.

Anna Saulsbury-Molina is a doctoral student in the Culture, Language, and Literacy program. She is currently working on her dissertation about language policy in a program for students from refugee-backgrounds. Her Masters Degree is also from UTSA and is in History.

Amalia "Maya" Guirao, Educational Specialist at The Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies, UTSA teaches Spanish Language courses designed for bilingual teacher candidates and serves as Advisor for the UTSA undergraduate and graduate bilingual student organizations BESO and GLOBE. Her area of research interests includes Spanish language acquisition for heritage speakers; Sociocultural approaches to language, literacy, identity; bilingualism/biliteracy; Latin@ education; bilingual education; teacher education; and qualitative and ethnographic methodologies.