Dr. Christian Walter

Christian Walter is the principal at Sylvia Mendez Newcomers School. Former EL teacher and presenter for the North Carolina Department of Instruction EL Support Team, he was recognized as Guilford County School’s Assistant Principal of the Year Finalist in October 2020. He is also a 2021 Latinxed Fellow and participated in the New Leaders' Assistant Principal Leadership Academy (APLA) in 2019-2020. Born and raised in Argentina, Christian earned his Bachelor’s in English and Broadcasting from the National University of La Plata in Argentina, a MA in TESOL from Greensboro College and a post-Master’s Certificate of School Administration and Executive Leadership from Gardner-Webb University. He also holds a post-master’s certificate for school administrators in Dual Language Immersion Programs from East Carolina University and an Ed.S from East Carolina University. Currently, he is a last year doctoral student at East Carolina University. Passionate about social justice and educational equity, his philosophy is tied to the belief that all students can learn regardless of their ethnicity or socio-economic status provided they are exposed to high academic expectations. 

      Dr. Priyanvada Abeywickrama

               San Francisco State University

Dr. Priyanvada Abeywickrama is Professor of English in the Department of English Language and Literature at San Francisco State University (SF State) and coordinates the TESOL MA program where she teaches graduate courses in second language listening & speaking and curriculum & assessment development. Dr. Abeywickrama also coordinates the Composition for Multilingual Students Program that serves both domestic and international multilingual learners. In addition to coordinating this program, from time to time, she also teaches writing and oral communication to undergraduate multilingual students. Dr. Abeywickrama is Chair of Graduate Council which serves as an advisory body to the Dean of Graduate Studies at SF State and also serves as a senator on SF State's Academic Senate that develops policies and procedures regarding faculty and administrative appointments, curriculum, business and fiscal matters, campus development, academic standards.   Dr. Abeywickrama’s research combines language assessment with issues in second language literacy and oral skills. As a teacher trainer, more recently her interest has been on classroom-based assessments that focus on assessment for learning. Being bilingual, a secondary area of her research is discourse analysis; specifically, codeswitching. She frequently presents her research at the annual conferences of CATESOL, International TESOL, and the American Association for Applied Linguistics. Dr. Abeywickrama is co-author with H. D. Brown of Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices, 3rd ed. (Pearson, 2018). 

Dr. Jamie L. Schissel

University of North Carolina

Jamie L. Schissel is Associate Professor, TESOL at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. Her community-engaged research focuses on assessment, language education policies, and teacher education specifically affecting culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Through historical analyses and participatory action research collaborations, her research projects emphasize relationship building to challenge inequities and enact more just educational practices. In doing so, Schissel strives to account for the social implications of this research. With Drs. Mario López-Gopar and Constant Leung, she co-founded and has co-facilitated meetings for Asociación Mexicana de Evaluación de Lenguas Indígenas (AMELI) since 2018.