Dr. Theresa Pedersen is a professor of special education in Northwestern College's undergraduate and graduate education departments. Most recently she taught for 10 years in DODEA schools in Japan and Germany. She also served two years as the principal of First Coast K-12 School in Jacksonville, Florida Prior to joining Northwestern's faculty, she taught at Northern Illinois University, where she was the instructor of the year in the Department of Teaching and Learning.

Nicole Drago graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree from the University of San Diego (USD) and received her Elementary Credential from Cal State San Marcos. For three years now, she has been a teacher in the Solana Beach School District. She is of the philosophy that students should lead their own education through their interests and passions. She looks forward to seeing how each and every one of you succeed and thrive during your 10 weeks together. 

Sherilyn is a student in the Education for Social Justice PhD program, an independent contractor for humanities curriculum and assessment writing, and a volunteer research coordinator in a University of San Diego SOLES research project on the implementation of the Ethnic Studies requirement in the San Diego Unified School District. Sherilyn began her research and curriculum writing journey at the University of San Diego. She was the recipient of the Dean’s Merit Scholarship Award, working with Dr. Hubbard on white privilege. She has spent the last six years working for a large charter school network in New York City as both a middle school history teacher as well as a middle school history curriculum and assessment writer and manager. She taught Grades 5-8 history, wrote the Grade 8 U.S. History curriculum and assessments, including a U.S. History and Government Regents Mastery review curriculum and mastery unit. She also wrote and managed Grades 5-8 project-based units and co-wrote the Gr5 world history survey course. 

Taryn Robertson holds an MEd in Advanced Literacy and Reading Comprehension, and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Denver. She is a mixed methods researcher interested in multicultural education. Her research examines culturally relevant pedagogical approaches as interventions for successful second language acquisition for English Language Learners (ELL), as well as improvements in reading comprehension and summary writing outcomes for ELL students. She enjoys collaborating with researchers, educators, and learners to identify effective quantitative interventions for ELL students while also taking student and educator voice and preference into account through qualitative approaches and analyses. Dr. Robertson has published articles in high-impact peer reviewed journals and has presented findings at conferences such as PCRC, AERA, AATC, and NAME.

Alex Dwyer is a Special Education teacher in El Cajon, California. He loves it.