Faculty & Staff Directory
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Education Faculty & Staff Directory
First Name
Christina
Last Name
Ponzio
Email
ponzioc@gvsu.edu
Role(s)
- Assistant Professor
Office Address
482C DeVos
Office Phone
616-331-6226
Department
- Literacy, Educational Foundations, and Technology
Program
- Literacy Studies
About
Building from my previous experiences as a secondary ELA/ESL teacher, ESL program coordinator, and literacy coach in Metro Detroit and teacher educator at Michigan State University, University of Michigan, and Wayne State University, I am committed to advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice in language literacy education for all learners through three principles:
- Preparing teachers to enact equitable, inclusive and just language and literacy pedagogies requires the development of their critical consciousness of self and society.
- Positioning teachers and learners alike as insiders within literacy communities involves teaching as apprenticeship.
- The development of teachers’ critical consciousness and empathy must result in bottom-up praxis, or action.
These three principles are central to my work as a teacher educator and researcher in the Literacy Studies program at Grand Valley State University.
Teaching Areas
- Literacy Studies
Courses
- EDR 321: Content Area Literacy
- EDR 624: Elementary Literacy: Learners, Text, And The Environment
- EDR 625: Secondary Literacy: Learners, Text, And The Environment
- EDR 685: Literacy Instruction Practicum
- EDR 687: Reading/Literacy Specialist and Literacy Coach Practicum
Degrees
- Ph.D., Michigan State University
- B.A., Michigan State University
Academic & Professional Activities
- Michigan Department of Education’s Disciplinary Literacy Preparation Standards Implementation Supports and Resources Team - Member
- Michigan Council of Teachers of English (MCTE) - Representative-at-Large and Co-Director for Early Career Educators of Color Award Program
- Michigan Reading Association (MRA) - Member
- Michigan Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MITEOSL) - Member
- National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) - Member
Scholarly Interests & Research
- Bi/Multilingual Learner Education
- Disciplinary Literacies
- Teacher Education
- Teacher Identity and Ideology
- Teachers as Writers
- Organizational Change
- Qualitative Research: (Auto)Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, Narrative and Poetic Inquiry, Self-Study
Recent Peer-Reviewed Publications
Ponzio, C. M. (2025). Marveling at the art of language: Centering adolescents in developing disciplinary literacy for ELA. Michigan Reading Journal, 57(3).
Ponzio, C. M., Kopera, J., Krueger, J., Kwiatkowski, K., and Shiveley, H. (2025). Reclaiming and celebrating our names: Storytelling-as connection through an elementary-middle school partnership. Michigan Reading Journal, (57)2.
Ponzio, C. M. & Deroo, M. (2024). Re-envisioning teacher education for 21st century English language teaching. In N. Galloway & A. F. Selvi (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of English as an International Language. London, UK: Routledge.
Upcoming (*) and Recent Presentations
Ponzio, C. M. (2025). Distilling authentic practices for ELA disciplinary literacy teaching: Apprenticing pre-service teachers through virtual fieldwork. Literacy Research Association Annual Conference.*
Ponzio, C. M. (2025). Restoration through restorying: Integrating a critical translingual approach to writing name stories among language-minoritized adolescents. American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference.
Ponzio, C. M., Albert, B, & Weeks, S. (2025). Who’s at the center? Cultivating a critical lens to building and integrating culturally relevant text sets. Michigan Reading Association Annual Conference.
Stolle, E., Stoetzel, L., & Ponzio, C. M. (2025). Growing teachers in their support of multilingual learners. Michigan Reading Association Annual Conference.
Ponzio, C. M. (2024). Disciplinary literacy and student-centered assessment in the secondary English Language Arts classroom. Assessment Learning Network Series 2024-25 Series https://www.michiganassessmentconsortium.org/event/ela/ (Password: ALN12524).
Media Contributions
Assessment Learning Network Series 2024-25 Series:
- Living into disciplinary literacy essentials in the secondary ELA classroom
- Research support for secondary ELA disciplinary literacies
- Student-centered assessment approaches that develop disciplinary literacy in secondary ELA classrooms
- Disciplinary literacy and student-centered instruction and assessment in secondary English language arts
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