Heriberto Godina

Heriberto Godina, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of English Education at the University of Iowa. He is originally from El Paso, Texas, where he was a reading teacher at Eastwood Middle School and a writing instructor at El Paso Community College. After receiving his Masters of Arts in Teacher Education at the University of Texas at El Paso, Heriberto went on to study for his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he worked at the Center for the Study of Reading and the Bureau of Educational Research. Heriberto’s research primarily focuses on the second-language factors that effect Latino students’ participation in public school settings, and many of his academic publications reflect an interest in culturally-relevant practices in education. His future goals include conducting research that could help improve the status of Bilingual Education within the State of Iowa. He believes that an emphasis on Bilingual Education would help to address the disproportionately high dropout rate effecting Mexican background students. Heriberto also believes it is important to foster a positive mutual sense of respect, dignity, and acceptance that might allow all children to grow and learn from each other in a peaceful environment. The following link illustrates some of his research that has been developed into culturally-relevant curriculum for Mexican background students: http://www.uiowa.edu/~xin13/