Ryan Pontier

Affiliation

Florida International University

Biography

Ryan W. Pontier is an assistant professor of bilingual education and TESOL at Florida International University. A former 2nd and 3rd grade dual language teacher in Florida and Texas, he serves as Past President of the Florida Association for Bilingual Education (FABE), past co-chair for the Research and Evaluation Special Interest Group within the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE), Member of the Advocacy Working Group in AERA’s Bilingual Education Research SIG, Chair of the Early Childhood Bilingual Education Council for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Florida, and co-chair of the Government & Media Relations Committee for LULAC Florida. Dr. Pontier began his education career with Teach For America in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where he taught third grade in Spanish at a dual-language elementary school one mile from the Rio Grande. Dr. Pontier serves as PI for a 5-year $2.5M NPD Grant from OELA in the U.S. Department of Education. Creating Translanguaging Classrooms (TLC) will train PreK-2nd grade general education teachers and paraprofessionals to create and sustain multilingual learning environments and pedagogies. Dr. Pontier is also co-PI for Project Supporting Educators Educating Diverse Students (SEEDS), a 4-year $1.55M Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence Program grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Project SEEDS will support the creation of a teacher residency-like model to recruit, train, and sustain diverse teacher candidates and paraprofessionals to work in hard-to-staff Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Previously, Dr. Pontier won a Spencer Foundation Conference Grant.