Early Childhood Education with ESL Preparation

Erika Thulin Dawes is chair of the Language and Literacy Department and Professor of Language and Literacy in the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University. Erika also serves as the program director of the graduate Early Childhood Education program. 

A former elementary classroom teacher, reading specialist, and district literacy administrator, Erika now teaches and mentors courses in early childhood literacy, children's literature, and elementary literacy methods. Prior to Lesley, Erika taught literacy methods courses at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Along with Mary Ann Cappiello, she is the co-author of Teaching with Text Sets (Shell, 2012) and Teaching to Complexity: A Framework for Evaluating Literary and Content-Area Texts (Shell, 2014) and a forthcoming book with Stenhouse Publishers in 2019. She is a co-author of a book on writing instruction, Learning to Write with Purpose: Effective Instruction in Grades 4-8 (2009), and the author of ancillary materials for the well-established textbook Charlotte Huck's Children's Literature, now in its tenth edition, authored by her mentor Dr. Barbara Kiefer. In 2016, Erika was appointed chair of the Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children committee of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), for a two-year term.

She blogs about children's and young adult literature currently at "The Classroom Bookshelf," and reviews children's and middle grade books for Language Arts.

Rita Gordon is the director of Elementary Education programs and director of the online Mathematics Education M.Ed. program. She structures the math courses that she teaches so that students enjoy mathematics, believe that mathematics is useful and makes sense, and feel confident in their ability to do mathematics. She brings a rich skill set from her many years of experience in educational administration Pre-K though adults, a strong commitment to public schools, and a positive learning environment that is supportive, professional, and dynamic.  

Rita also co-directs the Teacher Residency Programs at Lesley.

Laura Schall-Leckrone teaches in and leads the graduate Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and Bilingual Education (TESOL/BE) programs at Lesley. Prior to completing her doctorate, she worked for seventeen years as a bilingual teacher, Spanish teacher, and K-12 curriculum director in city and suburban public schools. Her scholarship and collaborative work in teacher education and educational linguistics seek to bridge knowledge production in K-12 schools and higher education to improve learning opportunities for multilingual learners.

Her research includes a focus on equipping history teachers to teach critical literacies; practitioner research in TESOL and bilingual teacher preparation; and a linguistic ethnography of a K-6 multilingual school in a gateway community.

Along with recent graduates of the masters’ in TESOL and Bilingual Education program, Laura recently received a President’s Innovation Challenge grant to support the creation of a Bilingual Educator Leadership Network (BELN). Read more about the BELN collaborative

Laura also was one of the speakers at the annual 2021 June Fox Lecture focused on Inquiry in Educational Equity with colleagues Grace Enriquez and Nettrice Gaskins. Read more about this event.