Carmen Ocon
Associate Professor of Practice, Education
Associate Professor of Practic, Education
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Carmen Ocón holds a B.A. in Elementary Education and a M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership with a focus on literacy, language, and culture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She earned her Ph.D. in Education Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also holds a teaching certificate in elementary education, a middle-school teaching endorsement, a bilingual education teacher certificate, and a reading specialist endorsement.
Dr. Ocón's interests include educational policy, critical literacy, and sociocultural representations inside urban classrooms. Her teaching is informed by critical pedagogical practices and student-centered theories that connect research and practice, critical literacy in urban classrooms, and educational dialogues around race, class, gender, linguistic pluralism and multicultural identities across educational spaces.Cognizant of her migratory life journeys between México and the United States, Carmen chose teaching and lifelong learning as a means to serve and work collaboratively in underserved communities alongside parents, students, community members, and educators committed to social justice and educational equity. She served as a public school teacher both in the city of Chicago and its suburbs, inside bilingual, multicultural, and urban classrooms supporting the growth of resilient families and their neighborhoods. She also collaborated and taught for the Odyssey Project, a college-credit humanities program for adults with limited access to higher education supported by Bard College and the University of Illinois' Program for Research in the Humanities.
Dr. Ocón's current clinical work is focused at the elementary level. She supports Clark's pre-practicum and practicum teacher candidates working with the Clark and Worcester Public Schools Collaborative.
Degrees
- Ph.D. in Education Policy, Organization and Leadership, with a focus on Social and Cultural Studies of Education, minor in Gender Relations in International Development, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2013
- M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership, with a focus on Curriculum and Instruction: Literacy, Language, and Culture, University of Illinois, Chicago, 2003
- B.A. in Elementary Education, University of Illinois, Chicago, 1998
Affiliated Department(s)
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Scholarly and Creative Works
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Latino Education Institute, Early College Program: Youth Civic Union Summit
YPAR research: The Heart of an Activist; The Wishing Tree; The Climate Knowledge GameVisual and Plastic Arts, Spoken Word
Worcester State University
Jun. 1, 2024
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“Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Doors”: Supporting Critical Literacy in our Classrooms
Culturally Responsive Practice for Teacher Series
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Education Department, Clark University
May
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2022
Sponsored by Education Department
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LIDER: Immigrant Youth Participatory Action Research Celebration
Visual Plastic Arts, Spoken Word
Worcester State University
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Worcester, Massachusetts
May. 14, 2022
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Teaching as a Clinical Practice Profession: Research on Clinical Practice and Experience in Teacher Preparation
Chapter: “What else can we do?”: Teacher preparation programs as fields of epistemological community transformations. (Forthcoming)Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
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2021
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Partnership and Powerful Teacher Education: Success and Challenge in an Urban Model
Chapter: Embracing the not yet: Emerging Teacher Voices in the Elementary On- site seminar.Published by Routledge
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2019
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