LINGUISTIC MINORITY RESEARCH INSTITUTE

I am the daughter of two extremely supportive Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants who received less than  three years of formal education and have spent their lives as migrant workers in the agricultural fields of California.  Despite their limited educational background, my parents taught me how to read in Spanish by the time I was four years old.  With Spanish literacy as my educational basis, I eventually graduated from  UCLA with a BA in Psychology/Women's Studies, became a bilingual teacher in South Central Los Angeles, and after teaching for five years became convinced that the socio-emotional needs of low SES immigrant  and minority children are extremely neglected within public education.  Thus, I am presently pursuing a doctoral degree in Counseling, Clinical, School Psychology in order to help create and disseminate new knowledge which will, I hope, facilitate appropriate socio-emotional educational interventions with these populations.

My long term goal is to serve language minority children as a school psychologist. Growing up in a diverse community in San Diego, many of my peers were English Language Learners and were the children of immigrants. During my undergraduate career at UC Berkeley I served as a research assistant at San Francisco General Hospital working with Spanish-speaking immigrants who were suffering from Major Depression. I was also active in the Berkeley schools conducting media awareness workshops and tutoring sixth graders through the Break The Cycle Program.  After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1995, I spent four years in the Teach For America Program teaching bilingual fifth grade in Pasadena, California and assisting the Long Beach Unified School District with School psychology research.  I selected UC Santa Barbara for my graduate studies because of the faculty and student commitment to meeting the needs of minority children and their communities.

Over the past decade, Maria K. Denney has demonstrated a dedicated commitment to the Latino population in the Fields of Communication and Special Education.  Before returning to graduate school, Maria developed and provided Early Intervention services at Santa Barbara Cottage Children's Hospital to Latino families and their premature infants and children at risk or with disabilities.  Maria is a third year doctoral student in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Human Development and Disability at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Maria is a Graduate Research Assistant to Drs. George and Joanne Singer on The Family Centered Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Model  Demonstration Project for Young Children with Disabilities. 

Maria received a Bachelors Degree in Spanish from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at U.C.S.B. in 1989.  After graduation, Maria was a Research Associate for Dr. Federico Subervi-Velez and Dr. Juan Vicente Palerm at the Center for Chicano Studies at U.C.S.B. to assist the State of California to communicate with the State of California's Spanish-speaking population during emergencies. 

Maria's Masters Thesis examines Mexican parents' beliefs and goals of infant care and development for their premature and low birth weight infants.  Her research interests are grounded in the experiences of immigrant families with children at risk or with disabilities, bilingual language development and Early Intervention.

I am a first year graduate student pursuing a masters and a credential in School Psychology.  Although I was born in Los Angeles, I have spent many summers visiting relatives in Central America as well as traveling to South America. These experiences, as well as my ability to speak Spanish led me to want to work with immigrant English language learners.  After graduating from U.C. Berkeley, I worked  for the Los Angeles Unified School District as a bilingual elementary school teacher for 3 ½ years, while earning a BCLAD multiple subject teaching credential through the L.A.U.S.D.'s District Intern Program.  It was there as a teacher that I saw that Limited English Proficient students were suffering waiting extended periods of time to see a bilingual school psychologist. My desire after graduating is to work with these students and their parents in order to give them equal access to quality education.

I am a second year PhD student in the Clinical/Counseling/School Psychology program with an emphasis in School Psychology and Interdisciplinary Human Development.  Currently, I am evaluating the PASS program in Ventura that focuses on alternatives to suspension for middle school students.  In addition, I am in the process of helping the Fighting Back program in Santa Barbara write a proposal to receive funding for a Latina Mentoring program.  I am also working as a school psychology intern at both Santa Ynez High School and El Puente Continuation High School in Santa Barbara.  At both of these sites, I have the great opportunity of working with diverse populations and researching alternative assessment tools that are culturally and linguistically appropriate

I am most interested in working with at-risk students that are struggling with the impact of limited language proficiency and cultural discrimination and segregation. After obtaining my PhD, I plan to work as a School Psychologist and eventually go on to an administrative position.  At that level, I hope to focus on implementing school programs that cater to the needs of the diverse population in California.  I am very proud to be a recipient of the Bilingual Fellowship and a member of the group of students receiving this award.  We will make a great impact on the future of our children.

I am currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the Educational Psychology program at UC Santa Barbara and am serving as a graduate researcher with Project PRIME, a Local Systemic Change Initiative mathematics reform project in Oxnard, California. Project PRIME's goal is to double the number of minority students in advanced mathematics courses. The project fosters a strong parent network and encourages parents to take a leadership role at their children's schools.

My Master's Thesis examined the problem-solving and mental computation strategies of language-minority and English-speaking students using widely divergent mathematics curricula in two school districts.  Students experiencing the mathematics reform curriculum, even though it is more language intensive, showed considerably better facility with mental computation tasks than students in a more traditional curriculum. This work was presented in a paper I gave at the American Educational Research Association meeting in Montreal last April.

I have a California teaching credential and have taught middle school bilingual science courses as well as mathematics classes at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. My husband and I have been fortunate to experience the cultures of the Pacific Islands, Spain, and Africa while teaching overseas for many years.

Beth Yeager is a 5th grade teacher at McKinley Elementary School in Santa Barbara as well as a doctoral student in Teaching and Learning in the Graduate School of Education, UCSB.  She has been working with linguistically diverse students at both the preschool level and the upper intermediate level for all of her teaching career, including 27 years as a bilingual teacher in a bilingual classroom.  Having been involved in a research partnership as a teacher with the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group at UCSB for 9 years, she is now eagerly and actively pursuing and advanced degree that will allow her to further explore the issues of diversity and equity of access to academic curriculum.