An educator passionate about language, equity, and the power of global learning.
Johna teaches multilingual students in U.S. K-12 classrooms. The bulk of her work is literacy: building reading and writing in students whose first language often isn't English, without treating that first language as a problem to be solved.
Her Fulbright year in the Philippines is focused on how schools there build community through restorative practice, particularly in classrooms where multiple home languages are present. Some of what she's learning will adapt to U.S. classrooms; some of it won't. The distinction is part of the project.
The work, up close.
She approaches the work with curiosity and persistent reflection. School is academic, but it is also social. The classrooms students return to are the ones where they feel they belong.
Her hope is to return with concrete material that her students and colleagues can use — not a single framework, but a body of practice rooted in what actually worked.
This site documents the project as it unfolds.