Early Childhood Ed Professor Selected for New CSU Faculty Fellowship
Early Childhood Studies Professor Marisol Diaz strives to ensure her students have the tools and confidence they need to teach children from various cultural backgrounds.
She hopes to share some of that wisdom with other fellow educators by creating an educational video highlighting her teaching methods. The film project is linked to a new CSU faculty fellowship initiative to create a more diverse learning space for multilingual classrooms.
Diaz, who specializes in multilingual literacy and reading and writing courses, was one of 10 CSU faculty members selected for the fellowship and jumped on the opportunity to be a part of the effort.
“In this fellowship, I really get to showcase and share these interests,” she said. “One of the goals of this program is to bring in all these experts across California with diverse and awesome backgrounds. We get to create resources for other professors and educators to use in their classrooms. Being connected through this fellowship is time I really value, because innovation needs that. We can’t do this alone.”
The CSU launched the Early Childhood Multilingual Literacy Teacher Preparation Faculty Fellowship to align with California’s goal of better supporting bilingual education.
The fellowship, run by the CSU Center for the Advancement of Reading & Writing (CAR/W), aims to strengthen the preparation of future early childhood educators through a multilingual learning lens.
The founding cohort meets monthly to share ideas and discuss projects they are working on. The faculty members were given the liberty to think of a resource they wanted to create. This could be a syllabus, assignment, or other classroom resources. Diaz’s idea was to create a video along with supporting resources to share her pedagogy in her classroom at CPP, focusing on phonological awareness, the ability to recognize sound patterns while reading, and multilingual learners in her ECS 3600 course.
Diaz has been collaborating with MediaVision on her video. She created a storyboard and plan for executing her documentary, and with the OK from her students, she has been recording her lectures so others in the CSU will be able to see her hands-on, interdisciplinary and critical manner of teaching. Part of the video will include student testimonials on how they learn these principles.
The project includes students doing teaching simulations, where they create a multicultural literacy lesson grounded in theory, literacy and language acquisition. The students practice teaching each other, almost like playing.
Diaz noted how this approach is grounded in Cal Poly Pomona’s philosophy.
“I think this is especially important to our CPP Become by Doing,” she said. “We never really arrive. I am still in the process of becoming. I think this showcases our approach as a polytechnic university in how we are not only teaching these things through lectures and assignments, but also by being super hands-on, engaged and with a lot of reflection.”
The video, along with all of the other faculty fellow resources, will be available for all CSU campuses and the public in an open space that can be accessed via the CAR/W website by fall 2026.
Diaz is hoping this will make an impact on the field of multicultural education. She wants her students, who come from all cultural backgrounds, to be prepared in this subject and feel confident entering the workforce and teaching little ones someday.
“This is going to hopefully empower students in their own identities,” she said. “Students can grow in their appreciation for the diversity that is in their society and community. The heart of an educator is making space for everyone.”