UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Seeking to raise her students’ awareness of others’ perspectives, Sophia L. Ángeles arrives as an assistant professor of education (bilingual) in the Penn State College of Education after having recently earned a doctorate in education with a concentration in urban schooling at the University of California, Los Angeles’ School of Education and Information Studies.
Ángeles’ research examines how immigration and language policies and practices shape the educational trajectories of high school-age immigrants. In addition to her research experience, she has engaged in advocacy and lobbying efforts to protect the rights of English learners and their families while accessing an equitable education through her work with the Californians Together English Learner Leadership and Legacy Initiative.
“My research focuses on newcomer youth, who are youth who have recently arrived in the U.S. and are learning English, what their experiences are in high school, and how high schools are preparing them to be college-and-career ready,” Ángeles said. “The work I have done in the past couple of years stems from when I was working as a high school counselor and began realizing that students enrolled in English language development courses had very different academic experiences. Being labeled an English learner seems to foreclose students’ access to college-and-career readiness opportunities.”
As she begins her work in the college, Ángeles said she wants to not only impact her students educationally but also to teach them the skills necessary to think critically even after their time at Penn State has concluded.
“I enjoy creating classrooms that are shaped as communities of learners,” Ángeles said. “I want them to see that we all are coming to this space to learn from each other. When I’ve been teaching, I learn a lot from my students. I value fostering a community where students rely on each other and realize that we all bring something to the table. It’s important for me as an instructor to help facilitate connections between students’ lived experiences and the material that we’re reading.
“I would hope that [my students] would walk away recognizing different perspectives or different ways of knowing,” Ángeles continued. “That they walk away recognizing the complexity and nuance in issues we see in education. Finally, I hope they learn the value in asking questions in order to better understand the problems they’ll be encountering as professionals.”