Teaching Ambassador Fellowship
2010 Alumni Classroom Fellow
Fort Collins, CO
Bio/Overview: After nine year teaching English, ESL and serving as literacy coach for Manual Arts High School in South Central Los Angeles, Garcia moved to teach English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. In every role, Garcia’s goals have been constant: to provide inner-city students with the necessary tools to engage in civic participation and for them to be able to critically read and write in their post-secondary careers. The students that leave Garcia’s classroom and are accepted into four-year universities are testament to the results of intensive focus on college applications, critical analysis of socioeconomic inequality, and engagement in situated project based learning.
Educational Values/Philosophy: Garcia has carefully sought to infuse his literary instruction with culturally relevant curriculum and Socratic dialogue to guide students toward a nuanced understanding of their need to accept the challenge of succeeding in high school. He explores ways to integrate mobile media and social networking in his classroom to help students develop the skills they will need in a 21st century work environment or college campus. Garcia’s classroom serves as a hub of youth participatory action research; as co-creators of inquiry topics, Garcia and his students jointly create and assess the needs of their community and are pushing toward democratic, lasting change through English curriculum.
Achievements: Garcia has written several scholarly articles and presented at numerous professional conferences on the use of media and popular culture in classrooms. In 2009 he earned the UCLA Graduate School of Education George Kneller Prize, and in 2010 completed two fellowships: the Elwood H. Sizllitt and Mildred B. Finney Fellowship, and the Social Science Research Council’s Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship.
Leadership Experience: Antero blogs regularly about education at www.theamericancrawl.com. As a teacher, Garcia has served as a member of the School Site Council, a Lead Teacher for the School of Communication and Global Awareness Small Learning Community, and mentored student teachers in the UCLA and USC teacher preparation programs. He had the opportunity to co-develop an alternate reality game to develop environmental literacy skills. The Black Cloud Game, in collaboration with Greg Niemeyer at UC Berkeley, provoked students to take real time assessment of air quality in their community. Using custom-developed sensors that accurately measure and send data online about Carbon Dioxide, Volatile Organic Compounds, Light, Sound, and Temperature, students critically analyzed the role pollution played in their daily lives. The game culminated in a public ceremony in which students shared the findings about their community and made recommendations about air quality. The technology and curricular design developed for the Black Cloud were recently acquired by an environmental corporation for large-scale development and the game was a semi-finalist for the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge.
Affiliations: National Council of Teachers of English, American Educational Research Association, Digital Media and Learning, Modern Language Association, National Writing Project, UCLA Writing Project Tech Team.Education: Garcia received a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of California-Los Angeles. He went on to earn his Master’s in Education, also from UCLA. In 2012 Antero earned his Ph.D at UCLA in the Urban Schooling Division of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. His dissertation research focused on developing critical literacies and civic identity through utilizing mobile media in formal learning environments.
Areas of Interest/Expertise:
- Digital media and learning
- English/writing teaching
- Teacher effectiveness
- Urban education