Faculty and Staff

Rachel Martin, Ph.D.

Rachel Martin has been a teacher of literacy and language in community-based settings and community colleges. She has also coordinated bilingual (Spanish/English) publishing projects for youth of color in urban neighborhoods, welfare activists, and others. For the past 12 years, she has worked in the field of teacher education. Among the courses she teaches are Second Language and Literacy Acquisition, Practices of Reading & Writing, Children's and Young Adult Literature, Cultural Studies & Media Literacy, Social Studies Methods, Grassroots Urban Education Reform, and Participatory Action Research.

Her primary research interest is bridging the gap between families and communities on one side, and public schools on the other, to further both classroom level change and coalition-building in movements for wider school reform. Toward that end, her book manuscript Seeing Smart: Overcoming the Minefields of Cultural Deficit Thinking is in final stages of preparation for review.

Dr. Martin’s first book was Listening Up: Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers and Students. Beginning with a (friendly) critique of Paulo Freire’s influence on literacy education, Listening Up then looks to the ways poststructural and psychoanalytic ideas can lead to additional practices. She has also written numerous curriculum guides, among them Sabemos y Podemos: Learning through Social Action, and Other Colors: Stories of Women Immigrants.

Dr. Martin received her M.A. in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Cultural Studies from the University of New Mexico.