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Faculty
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Suzanne Charlton
Lecturer
Multicultural Education, English Language Development Coordinator
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Biography
A former California Teacher of the Year, Dr. Charlton earned a B.A. and M.A. from UC Irvine in Spanish, and a Ph.D. in Education from Claremont Graduate School. As a high school teacher she taught Spanish and ESL and developed an International Studies and Model United Nations program for Mission Viejo High School students that led them to win numerous national and international awards. She directed a regional center of the California International Studies Project, the Global Education Program in Southern California (GEPSCA), and the South Coast International Resource Center (SIRC) at Cal State University, Long Beach, which provided K-12 teachers from 8 partnership districts with global and multicultural education programs. Currently she directs the California Foreign Language Project at UC Irvine, COACH, providing in-service workshops and summer institutes for Foreign Language teachers from 24 regional school districts.
In both curriculum and staff development, Dr. Charlton has worked extensively with interdisciplinary projects including these two California Subject Matter Project centers. She has taught both Social Studies and Foreign Language Methods courses at three universities and was the director of the Heritage of the Americas Project, a bilingual Humanities Magnet Special Secondary Project at La Habra High School. As a Spanish teaching expert with considerable cross-cultural living and study experiences abroad, she established several student exchanges and summer institutes for students in Spain and Mexico and planned and directed two summer immersion institutes for California Spanish teachers in Costa Rica and a fulbright Institute in Chile.
At UCI she taught Foreign Language methods and advised Foreign Language and worked with Bilingual student teachers. She authored and coordinates a unique model for community service and outreach. In Ed 160, 160L, "Practicum in After School Learning and Inquiry," which is part of the UCLinks Project and part of the Undergraduate Minor in Education. In this course, UCI undergraduates study theories of cognitive and linguistic development and spend 30 hours with children at an inner city elementary school, sharing technology-based recreational learning programs and games. The UCI students develop skills in ethnographic research as they learn first-hand about how minority and low-income children develop language, academic and social skills. Some of these students choose to continue community service in Ed 103, an avanced course in tutoring for work with special populations.
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