Sylvia Gonzales

Age: 30

Home Town: San Diego, California

Education: B.A. English, UC Berkeley; M.Ed Teaching and Curriculum, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Specific Field Interests: Education, Curriculum Design/Implementation, Pedagogical Practices, Anti-Poverty Policy, Inequality

Placement: RIVER, Rishi Valley

Area of Focus: Education

Highlights: After graduating from UC Berkeley, Sylvia returned to her hometown of south San Diego to work as an AmeriCorps Fellow, in border-community schools with a focus on providing gang and violence interventions for targeted students. Afterwards, as a graduate student at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Sylvia conducted research for the project, "Redirecting the School-to-Prison Pipeline" at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, where she facilitated focus groups to document the anecdotes of young men of color and their experiences surrounding disciplinary actions in Boston area public schools. The majority of her teaching experience has been serving the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the nation.