Today we’d like to introduce you to Rafael Lara-Alecio.
Hi Rafael, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing up in Guatemala, Central America, I lived with my three brothers, my two sisters, my mother, my father, and my grandmother. My grandmother was instrumental in my love for storytelling and writing. I attended public elementary through high school, and then I finished my Bachelor’s Degree in Science, Mathematics, and Pedagogy at the Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala City. During my years as a teacher in the Normal Rural School Pedro Molina, La Alameda, Chimaltenango, Guatemala for teachers where I had the privilege and honor to begin my teaching career, I was selected to attend the first cohort of educators for an International Master’s Degree in Measurement, Evaluation, and Research in Education at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. My next career opportunity was at the Universidad de San Carlos, as I began a faculty position in the College of Humanities, Department of Pedagogy and as a director of pedagogy for the preparation of teachers at the middle and high school levels. They received scholarships sponsored by the Ministry of Education from all in-service teachers across Guatemala. As a new extension service of the University, on the weekends, I went across the country to teach clinical teachers pedagogical courses including statistics and evaluation where they completed their requirements for their secondary teaching degrees. A year later, I was called by the Chancellor of the University to serve as a Provost, and ultimately President of the Universidad de San Carlos at Chiquimula. Due to the Guatemalan civil war, I left behind my homeland to pursue the American Dream. Now, coming to the United States with no academic English background was a major stress; however, along my journey, I met people who extended a hand, and I was able to attend a Community College as I learned English via an Associates of Arts Degree in Business and Data Processing (I was able to use my mathematics background to acquire English since math is a universal language), to work on a full-time basis in a chemical company (due to my science/chemistry/physics background), and with an eye on a Ph.D. Ultimately, I was able to learn English and was admitted to the doctoral program in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Utah.
Since graduating with my Ph.D., I primarily have served as faculty at Texas A&M University, and recently, my current Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education and Human Development at TAMU honored me with a 30-year pin. During this 30-year period, I have been honored with many awards such as the Montague Teaching Excellence Award, the Texas A&M University Association of Former Students (AFS) Service Extension Outreach Award, AFS Distinguished Research Award, the TAMU Diversity Award, the College of Education and Human Development Mentoring Award, as well as the Service Award. At the national level, I was the Southeastern Conference TAMU nominee for outstanding faculty. At a state level, I was recognized by the Texas Association of Bilingual Education as the Higher Education Honoree. At the Texas A&M University System level, I was awarded the highest honor that any faculty can receive—the Regents Professor.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
As I said before, at the beginning of my time in the United States, my major challenge was to learn English as an academic language. As we know in research and validated by our own experience, those who are bilingual generally transfer knowledge and skills from their academic native language to the second language. However, the nuances of the language and its complexity in terms of the culture where the language is embedded is another layer of learning a second language and a challenge and key to succeed in society. Today, I feel comfortable saying I am still learning English and still making some mistakes, but I can consolidate my ideas through my teaching, research, and service. Through this challenge, I was able to identify with many children, teachers, and others who have come to this beautiful country as they look for a future here. Additionally, those experiences and my observations of many bilingual and English as second language classrooms prompted me to begin the creation of a new theory which has been validated and published. It is the only intentionally developed theory with an instrument for classroom observations, specifically focused on pedagogical improvements in the bilingual, ESL, or dual language classrooms. I have tested this theory successfully as well in classrooms internationally where English is not the primary language. Due to my work in theory development, one of the highest forms of research, I was an editor on a Handbook of Educational Theories which has been used by 1000s of faculty and graduate students across the country and beyond.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In my career, I have worked and am continuing to work at different levels with hundreds of teachers, administrators, students, parents, and families. All my professional life, I have embarked on working with formal and informal educational programs. I conduct formal research in schools to improve quality education; much of my research has included many teachers, administrator, parents, and teachers in the Houston area. With my team of colleagues, I also write books for children, parents, and families and many of them are bilingual books. For example, in 2019 and because COVID-19 pandemic, we wrote a book titled: There’s No Monster Outside; It’s a Virus. This work was distributed free of charge across the world in multiple languages, English, Spanish, Swahili, German, Farsi, Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Bengali, and Korean. It was sponsored by the Center for Research and Development in Dual Language and Literacy Acquisition (CRDLLA) which is a Texas A&M Board of Regents approved center which I founded in 2013.
At the time when I graduated with my Ph.D. at the University of Utah, I went to work for a national non-governmental education agency in Beaverton, Oregon. I learned how to write educational grants. This important tool provided me with the ability to bring resources to the university and to school districts and offer better educational opportunities to our students. I believe much of my success rests in the ability to provide such resources via teaching training and research grants. These grants are national in scope and help to improve the education of children and youth. An outgrowth, for example, of this grant writing is the myriad of graduate students who have been provided research and grant experiences over the years and who have had an opportunity to be a part of a broader effort to help others. Through our teaching training grants for example, we have been able to provide opportunities so in-service teachers can continue to their undergraduate and graduate education by undertaking and obtaining master’s and doctoral degrees. Among other benefits for being engaged in grants and as a result, is the first commercialized product, a curriculum that we partnered with from Texas A&M University’s College of Education and Human Development and Frog Street Press, a national early childhood program publisher. Relatedly, I am the co-author of a best seller anthology that is in English and Spanish, The Bilingual Book of Songs, Rhymes Stories, and Fingerplays for teachers of young children to encourage academic language development. I dedicated that book with this commentary in English and Spanish. “All the time, I dedicate my books to all children who hopefully one day will discover that those who read, write, and speak in two, or more languages have better opportunities to understand the world and to optimistically transform it! En toda oportunidad que tengo, siempre les digo a nuestros niños, Dedico mis libros a todos ustedes quienes pronto descubrirán que todos aquellos que leen, escriben y hablan en dos, o más lenguajes tienen mejores oportunidades para entender el mundo en que vivimos y lo más importante, la oportunidad para contribuir a su transformación.”
With my colleagues, we have developed Massive Online Open Professional Individualized Learning (MOOPILs) which are open access for teachers to engage in virtual professional development with just-in-time training. The focus is on improving instructional capacity of teachers who serve English learners (emergent bilingual students) students experiencing economic challenges. These can be found in two of our projects; Project MOOPIL https://elrc.tamu.edu/project-moopil/ and Project APLUS https://crdlla.tamu.edu/aplus/moopil/. Additional virtual professional development that is available for school leaders who serve high-needs campuses is what our team calls Top-Class Educational Professional Development. These Institutes and Academies can be found at https://elrc.tamu.edu/top-class-educational-pd/. Additionally, we have a Literacy-Infused Science Institute that is virtual and can be found at http://tx.ag/LISinstitute.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
I enjoy going to my ranch, San Rafael’s Ranch located, in Walker County, Texas. My favorite reading is Texas Agriculture and other cattle-related and gardening magazines. The Ranch has three small lakes that are spring-fed and are filled with catfish, perch, blue gill, and other species. In a quiet morning or afternoon, I truly enjoy ducks and ducklings swimming in different directions on the ponds. From there, I get inspiration to contribute to my books. Also, I truly enjoy my Brangus cattle and seeing the new calves born during the springtime. I also like hearing in the coyotes howl in the evening– a true Texas ranch experience, along with seeing every now and then a wild hog mama and her babies and hearing the owls hooting and another owl responding from afar. Additionally, I enjoy reading about coffee farming and avocado farming. I have several small farms around Antigua, Guatemala, where I grow coffee, black beans, corn, and avocados. I enjoy being able to go there when I can and to enjoy the vistas of the volcanos and the blue skies of this eternal spring country. Additionally, I like to read about the history of Guatemala and the Mayan civilization. From that inspiration came two major papers that we wrote, one on the Science of the Maya and one on Mayan Math.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://crdlla.tamu.edu/
- Facebook: @CRDLLATAMU
- Twitter: @CRDLLA_TAMU
Image Credits
The Bilingual Book of Rhymes, Songs, Stories, and Fingerplays
Gryphon House Lewisville, NC
The Handbook of Educational Theories
Information Age Publishing Charlotte, NC
