2005 Outstanding ELA Educator Award Winner
Sonia Nieto is the recipient of the eleventh Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts Award.
The Outstanding ELA Award recognizes a distinguished national or international educator who has made major contributions to the field of language arts in elementary education. The Elementary Section Steering Committee celebrated Dr. Nieto's contributions to the English language arts at the Elementary Section Get-Together during the NCTE Annual Convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Nieto is Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she attended the New York City public schools and then St. John’s University, where she received a B.S. in Elementary Education. After graduation, she spent a year in Madrid, receiving her M.A. in Spanish and Hispanic Literature from the New York University Graduate Program in Spain. Moving to Massachusetts with her family in 1975, she received her doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts, concentrating in curriculum studies with special concentrations in multicultural and bilingual education.
Dr. Nieto’s work has focused on multicultural and bilingual education, curriculum reform, teacher education, Puerto Rican children’s literature, and on the education of Latinos, immigrants, and other culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. She has written numerous book chapters and articles on these issues, and her articles have appeared in such journals as Educational Leadership, Theory into Practice, The Harvard Educational Review, and Multicultural Education. She also edited the Language Arts column "Reading Corner for Educators" from 2001-2003.
Dr. Nieto has received many awards for her research and advocacy, including the Human and Civil Rights Award from the Massachusetts Teachers Association (1989), the Community Change of Boston Drylongso Award for Anti-Racist Activists (1995), the Teacher of the Year Award from the Hispanic Educators Association of Massachusetts (1996), the Educator of the Year Award from NAME, the National Association for Multicultural Education (1997), and the New England Educator of the Year Award from Region One of NAME (1998), among others. She was also a recipient of the Annenberg Institute Senior Fellowship for 1998-2000, and she has received two honorary doctorates, one in Humane Letters from Lesley University in 1999 and the other in Intercultural Relations from Bridgewater State College in 2004. In June 2000, she was awarded a month-long residency at the Bellagio Center in Italy and in 2003, she was named to the Críticas Journal Hall of Fame as the Spanish-Language Community Advocate of the Year.
Read "Education as Political Work: An Interview with Sonia Nieto" by Maria E. Fránquiz which appeared in Language Arts, Volume 83, Number 2 in November, 2005.  (PDF)
Read "The Light in Her Eyes: An Interview with Sonia Nieto" by Mary Kitagawa which appeared in Language Arts, Volume 78, Number 2 in November, 2000. (PDF)
Visit Dr. Nieto's website at http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~snieto/
Books:
Why We Teach. NY: Teachers College Press, June 2005.
Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education. NY: Longman Publishers, 4th ed. 2004 (1992; 1996; 2000).
What Keeps Teachers Going? NY: Teachers College Press, 2003.
Language, Culture, and Teaching: Critical Perspectives for a New Century (a compilation of previously published journal articles and book chapters). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, Inc., 2002.
Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Schools. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000.
The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities. NY: Teachers College Press, NY: Teachers College Press, 1999. (A 1999 American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Selection)
Journal Articles:
“What Keeps Teachers Going?” Educational Leadership, v. 60, n. 8 (May 2003), pp. 14–18.
“Profoundly Multicultural Questions,” Educational Leadership, v. 60, n. 4 (December 2002/January 2003), pp. 6–10.
Related Information:
Outstanding ELA Educator Award Overview
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