Olivia Obeso

UC Los Angeles
PhD Student
oobeso@g.ucla.edu

Olivia Obeso is a doctoral student in the Urban Schooling Division of UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, where she also serves as a Field Supervisor for elementary, dual language residents with UCLA’s Teacher Education Program. After earning a B.A. in Linguistics and Spanish, Olivia moved into the field of language teaching as a teacher and program administrator, while also earning her M.A. in TESOL. Olivia came to UCLA to engage in work that focuses on understanding and improving the ways that students labeled as English Learners experience their education. Her research efforts are modeled on research-practice partnerships, which require reciprocity and expansion of expertise between the researcher, practitioners, and community members. Her motivation in this approach is to ensure that research efforts and findings are generated by and for communities of focus, making them locally useful while also contributing to a more equitably distributed knowledge base in the field as a whole. Always central in her work is a focus on building community and supporting educators.