PhD Candidate in Educational Leadership at the University of Southern California, in the concentration of Leading Instructional Change
Jennifer Lopez is a first-generation Mexican-American who strives for social justice and equity every day from her elementary classroom in Sylmar, California. With over 12 years of teaching experience in both elementary and middle school, Jennifer has also served as a grade level lead, a girls’ soccer coach, a student council facilitator, and mentor teacher. Outside of her educator responsibilities, Jennifer is actively involved in Educators for Excellence (E4E). Jennifer was a member of E4E’s Los Angeles Teacher Policy Team that wrote “One School of Thought: Moving Towards the Common Core” in 2015. Currently, she is on the Executive Committee of E4E’s National Teacher Leader Council, helping plan, facilitate, and guide the work for this group. As a lifelong learner, Jennifer is currently completing her doctorate in Educational Leadership at the University of Southern California, in the concentration of Leading Instructional Change. She previously received her BA from University of California, Los Angeles and MAT from Duke University. In her free time, you can find her hiking at national parks, watching soccer, or traveling the world.
Her qualitative action research focused on how to best support her colleagues’ capacity in creating more meaningful learning opportunities in math. In order to accomplish this, Jennifer facilitated weekly professional learning sessions for classified staff (i.e., teaching assistants and/or after-school coaches) to support Latinx students with math during the after-school program. Utilizing adaptive leadership, critical reflection, and the andragogical moves of modeling, cognitive structures, and discourse, Jennifer sought to create transformative learning moments for her colleagues as they lesson plan. The findings for this study can help inform educators, administrators, and after-school programming on how to create the conditions and structures to promote more meaningful learning opportunities for students.