Sergio Sanchez

UC Davis
PhD Candidate
slsanchez@ucdavis.edu

Sergio is an international student from Argentina who joined the Ph.D. program at UC Davis in 2015. Before moving to the States, Sergio taught English, Drama (K-12), and English as a Second Language in language schools (in Argentina) for about 10 years. Once at UC Davis, he become a teaching assistant for several Education courses at UC Davis. Due to his involvement as an educator on campus, Sergio joined the Center for Educational Effectiveness as a Teaching Assistant Consultant (2016-2019). As a TAC consultant, Sergio advised other graduate student instructors, and prepared and facilitated workshops and trainings for new TAs.

Sergio is interested in working with underrepresented populations to understand the processes enhancing (or hindering) their opportunities to access education. He is also interested in studying the benefits of drama and poetry in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms for language acquisition and writing. This last endeavor led him to start working on projects studying preservice teachers learning about drama pedagogy and its benefits for student learning. His work seeks to understand how novice teachers make adaptations across disciplines to implement drama strategies in diverse California classrooms. He currently serves as the Senior Graduate Research Fellow for the Center for Shakespeare in Diverse Classrooms, at UC Davis School of Education.

Sergio also works closely on several other projects with his primary advisor, Dr. Steven Athanases. Much of their research focuses on teacher inquiry and preservice teachers’ first attempts on dialogic instruction in English Language Arts classes. Since 2016, Sergio has been presenting about his projects at national conferences such as LRA and AERA with faculty from UC Davis School of Education.

“I want to become a teacher educator in the future. I value how K-12 teachers develop diverse strategies to give their students better opportunities to succeed. As TE scholar, I hope to assist new teachers in developing their skills and potential to be the best teachers they can be.”