Day 9
Dr. Margaret Ferrara
Become confident and conquer your fears.
Margaret Ferrara is the Director of Elementary, Secondary, and Human Growth and Development programs in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Reno. Before she graduated with her PhD from Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, she had an extensive teaching career in urban and suburban schools in grades levels ranging from early childhood to high school and in all levels of student learning - gifted, special education, and students at-risk of not finishing high school. Her focus in her research and service is in working with programs that focus on school-university partnerships, single gender, and family engagement While these seem at times to be disparate interests, Dr. Ferrara (Dr. F to her students) finds ways to blend myriad dimensions to her work to bring attention and teaching strategies to meld these foci together in her classroom teaching, research, and her passion on service learning and community engagement. Her belief is that preservice teachers need to live and learn in the local community and bring the community with its multiple perspectives into their own learning and in their classrooms of the future. Dr. Ferrara is a long distance runner and hopes to complete her 28 marathon in spring 2018, one that she has promised will be her last.
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I'm an Associate Professor of Literacy and Language, African American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. I focus on dismantling supremacist patriarchies through research, teaching, and coaching. As a sociocultural literacist, I work to understand personal and public voices and stories to solve personal and public problems. I do this by researching the evolutionary nature and function of literacies and texts through the discourses of narrative research. My work exposes impetuses for various personal and social ills such as racism, sexism, and ableism.
I love to mediate way before dawn, work out like a soldier, and shop alone. I prefer rum to wine, jeans to skirts, and like my heels sky high (except when I'm wearing cowboy boots). Every year I ask my stylist to cornrow and bead my hair in homage to Patrice Rushen and Stevie Wonder (if you know of these artists and understand why demonstrating embodied respect for them is important, we can probably be friends). I believe in ghosts, fairies, and hobbits (for real). Musically, I vibe to old school everything (hip hop, R&B, jazz, rock, and classical) and especially dig Hildegard von Bingen. I trust children a little bit more than adults, respect teens for their fearlessness, admire elders for their tenacity, and occasionally prefer the company of dogs to people. I'm really getting into interior design and have a penchant for acquiring east coast real estate. I'm also a survivor of multiple terrors in love.
I invite you to learn more about me and the projects I am involved with at JeanineStaples.com.
