Letter from the Editor

Grace Inae Blum

Grace Inae Blum is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction-ELL/Bilingual Education at Seattle Pacific University. Her experiences as a daughter of first-generation Korean immigrants, mother to two school-aged, biracial children, and former P-12/ Adult Literacy educator greatly inform her commitments toward culturally sustaining teaching, scholarship, and service. Prior to her work as a teacher educator, she was an elementary school teacher having worked in both bilingual and mainstream classrooms in public schools in the greater Chicagoland and Los Angeles areas. She has also worked as an adult literacy/ESL educator both in immigrant communities in the US and in northern Iraq. Most recently, Dr. Blum was an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood/ Elementary/ TESL-Bilingual Education at Central Washington University. Her current research interests include humanizing teacher education, teacher preparation for culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms and the recruitment/retention of BIPOC educators.