Master of Arts in Teaching and Learning and 1st Year Ed.D Students
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Marina Hayden
Marina Hayden is an Academic Coordinator with the Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of Undergraduate Education at UC San Diego. She focuses her efforts on coordinating the campus Education Initiative which was launched in Fall 2012. She is also a lecturer at the Jacobs School of Engineering and teaches the Orientation to Engineering course series for first-year students. She has worked at UC San Diego for the last thirteen years in several positions, including Director of Engineering Student Services.
Marina has a B.S. degree from UC San Diego in Electrical Engineering and an M.B.A. from the University of San Diego. She is currently enrolled in the Ed.D. program in Teaching and Learning at UC San Diego. Her research interests include better understanding the needs that first-year students have when transitioning to the university, and what programs, activities, and pedagogical approaches can help them succeed.
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Elena Hood
Elena Hood is an enrolled member of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and a descendent of the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Her passion and commitment is to serve the Native community and promote access to culturally responsive, relevant, and equitable education for American Indian children and families.
Elena received her Master’s Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with an emphasis in Administration, Planning and Social Policy. She completed her Bachelor’s Degree at UC Berkeley with a major in Native American Studies and a minor in Education Studies. As an undergraduate, Elena participated in the UC Education Abroad Program where she spent a year studying at the Universidad di Bologna in Italy. At Berkeley, she held leadership positions in the Native American Recruitment and Retention Center and the Inter-tribal Student Council.
Currently, she is a resource teacher and program manager at the Chámmakilawish Pechanga School, a tribally controlled elementary school. She works with individual students to remediate academic skills and implement individual learning plans. She collaborates with parents and families to navigate the IEP process and coordinates special programs such as the annual school spelling bee, I’m Going to College and the Pechanga chapter of the National Elementary Honor Society. Elena began her career in education as the Education Coordinator for the American Indian Child Resource Center in Oakland. Later, she was the Early Outreach Coordinator at Cal State San Marcos. Additionally, she has taught American Indian Studies at Palomar College and National University and been an invited speaker on issues in Indian education at a variety of education conferences and community events.
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Mimi Lockton
With a background as a middle school English and social science teacher, I now find myself working with toddlers and preschoolers and their parents. After receiving a BA from UC Santa Barbara in sociology and religious studies, I worked on a project to assist children of families in crisis. I quickly learned that highly motivated teachers often make the biggest impact on these children’s lives, so I earned a teaching credential and taught middle school in Orange County. While I thoroughly enjoyed my middle school students, I also love the curiosity and optimism of new families and young children. My current research interest lies in increasing challenge-seeking and persistence among preschoolers and assisting parents to do the same.
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Valine Moreno
My name is Valine Moreno. I am a middle school ELD and ELA teacher in San Diego. I am from Marina, California. I earned my single subject Spanish and English teacher credentials at California State University, Monterey Bay, where I had the opportunity to be a student teacher at my own high school. I earned my bachelors degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Go Bears! While at Cal, I developed a passion for traveling the planet and exploring the complexities of sustainable development in Central and South America. I graduated from Cal with a desire to apply what I learned abroad to our own impoverished communities in the states. The teachers, especially in Argentina and Ecuador, inspired me. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, but the teachers I met abroad helped me to see just how much I wanted to teach. When I'd return home from my adventures I'd sit with my abuelita and tell her all about my travels and my dreams. I was the first of her thirty grandchildren to get a college degree.
For me, education was my way out of the cycle of poverty, drugs, and teenage pregnancies that trapped so many within my family and community. When I was in high school, I participated in a program called Upward Bound, a program designed to get first generation, college bound, minority students to college. Upward Bound still influences me today. I developed a program at my school designed to teach inner city kids about conservation, science, and careers in science. We take local field trips, go camping, and do experiments all summer. My goal as an educator is to take my students out of the classroom to engage them in real world experiences.
My research interests are language acquisition during adolescence, social justice and equity, and experiential learning. I am also interested in the power of nature to heal children who have experienced trauma. This year I want to focus on building my knowledge of research in order to inform my teaching practice.
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Wendy O'Connor
Wendy O’Connor has been an educator for close to 19 years. Wendy currently supports K-12 teachers across the Vista Unified School District in the implementation of the Common Core State Standards where she works as a Content Support Resource Teacher. Prior to her current role, Wendy served as a Literacy Coach for four years. Before becoming a Literacy Coach, she was a classroom teacher. She taught 4th grade, 5th grade, and a 4/5 combination class. She has also worked as a Title I Reading teacher for grades K-6.
In addition to her regular duties, Wendy has served in numerous leadership roles such as the Site Liaison for California State University San Marcos student teachers, a Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) provider, a master teacher, and a grade level leader. In addition, she has been on the following district committees: ELA Innovation Cohort, Elementary Curriculum Committee, Language Arts Adoption Committee, Language Arts Core Literature Committee, and several Professional Development groups for planning and facilitating District Professional Development Days.Wendy received her Bachelor’s degree and Multiple Subject Teaching Credential from San Diego State University. Wendy’s Master's Degree and Reading Specialist Credential were earned from California State University San Marcos. Wendy’s goal in earning her doctorate degree in the Teaching and Learning Doctoral Program at the University of California San Diego is to eventually teach student teachers and veteran teachers at the university level.
Currently, Wendy is interested in supporting teachers as they transition into Common Core. Wendy’s research interests include developing Common Core resources for K-12 teachers through the use of innovative technology. She is currently looking for ways to incorporate technology into teacher professional development with the hope of reaching more teachers in an efficient and effective manner.
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Skye Pinon
Skye Pinon is an ESL teacher in the New Arrival Center at Crawford High School in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego. After earning a Multiple Subject teaching credential from Fresno State in 1999, Skye taught 5th grade in Fresno before moving to the Central Coast of California where she began teaching Reading, English, and Social Studies at a local middle school. After seven years of teaching in a mainstream classroom setting, a new opportunity presented itself and Skye unknowingly stumbled across her passion in education: ESL instruction. Upon moving to San Diego in 2008, Skye began teaching English to newly arrived students, many of whom have lived in refugee camps and have had severely interrupted formal education. Skye works with them teaching English, Math, Science, and History, as well as helping them develop a new identity in the educational and social system of the US. Her research interests lie in developing an inclusive curriculum that builds and strengthens critical literacy in her beginning English learners as a vehicle to help them begin to use their unique backgrounds as a source of academic strength. By teaching her incredibly diverse high school students to incorporate, rather than subdue, their global perspectives in their learning, Skye hopes to help them feel like informed, proactive participants in their education and career choices.
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Mariette Rattner
Raised in Orange County, California, long before anyone thought it was remotely cool or referred to it as “The OC,” I fled to San Diego with my family in 1993. I joined the faculty of the San Diego Mesa College School of Business & Technology, where I am now a tenured professor of business, in January 2000, and currently teach both classroom and online marketing and business courses to an ethnically and culturally diverse group of students. Prior to moving to San Diego and embarking on my career as a college professor, I worked in industry, first as a writer and editor for Rockwell International Corporation (now The Boeing Company) in Seal Beach, and later as a market research analyst for Fluor Daniel, Inc., in Irvine. I have a BA in English from California State University, Long Beach, and an MBA with an emphasis in marketing from the University of Southern California.
I am particularly interested in the transformation that is occurring in teaching and learning as creative individuals implement emerging technologies to build collaborative communities of inquiry and practice throughout the world. How Web 2.0 tools and mobile technology can be used to successfully establish and support such communities in a virtual setting is my primary domain of interest, and I look forward to exploring it during my time in the Doctor of Education in Teaching and Learning program at UCSD.
