About

Dr. Heather Homonoff Woodley, PhD is an educator, mother, activist and writer. She is a Clinical Associate Professor of TESOL, Bilingual Education and World Language Education and the Co-Director of Childhood Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at NYU. Her courses on campus and in the NYU Teacher Residency focus on anti-racist, social justice-based, and multilingual education collaboratively together with teachers, communities, families and youth. Heather’s research explores ways to meet the academic, linguistic and social-emotional needs of multilingual learners/emergent bilinguals and their families. She has published articles, chapters and curriculum on multilingual classroom practices and arts as social justice education, created online resources for teacher certification support, critical teacher education, and family empowerment in education. Heather received a 2020 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award at NYU, a 2019 Steinhardt Teaching Excellence Award, a 2018 Steinhardt Diversity & Innovation Grant, and a 2014 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the National Association of Bilingual Education. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Morocco, and earned her PhD in Urban Education at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, her MS in Education (TESOL) from City College of New York, CUNY, and her BA in History from Wesleyan University. She was a Research Assistant with the City University of New York – New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals (CUNY-NYSIEB) providing teacher support, classroom resources, and leadership training for public schools. Prior to this, she taught middle and high school TESOL and ELA in the Bronx and Washington, DC, and was a teacher-educator at City College, CUNY and with the NYC and DC Teaching Fellows. Heather is a regional delegate with NYSABE (NY State Association for Bilingual Education), serves on the national planning committee for Free Minds, Free People, a conference for transformative education with the Education for Liberation Network, and is an active member of her children’s public school PTA. View her full CV here.