Sarah Gallo

Sarah Gallo, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Language Education and Urban Social Justice at Rutgers Graduate School of Education. As an undergraduate student, Gallo studied Spanish, Latin American studies, and environmental studies. She earned her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction and Urban Education in Massachusetts directly after bilingual education was banned and during this time Gallo was interested in better understanding how to incorporate the linguistic and educational resources that Latinx middle schoolers brought to their schooling that were often discounted (or disallowed) in classroom spaces. She then earned her earned her Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics and focused on how, within a context of anti-immigrant sentiment, Mexican immigrant fathers were deeply involved in their children’s educational lives in traditional and innovative ways that were predominantly overlooked in schools, research, and the media.

After college, Gallo’s inspiration to work in education began while working for an educational non-profit that was dedicated to enhancing traditional school-based learning with broader community and family-based pedagogical practices. She began working in a predominantly Latinx middle school and loved the energy, innovation, and creativity of the students she worked with and— due to the recent ban on bilingual education in Massachusetts where I was working—became interested in doctoral work that taught about holistic and familial educational experiences for bilingual immigrant children. Gallo’s expertise in the areas of immigration and education grew out of long-term work with students, families and teachers during the Obama and Trump administrations, where immigration policies and practices began to deeply shape the educational experiences of children from undocumented or mixed-status families.

In Gallo’s current role at the GSE, she helps to prepare pre-service and practicing educators who work with emergent bilingual students across classroom contexts, including Bilingual, English as a Second Language, and World Language classrooms. Gallo also works with doctoral students with interests related to bilingual, im/migrant, and transnational education as well as questions related to anti-racist pedagogies and linguistic justice in schooling. Her research has brought attention to the ways that undocumented status shapes the lives and learning of young children, their families, and their teachers on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border.

• Expertise & Research Interest

  Languages

  English and Spanish

• Research Work With Students

  Im/migrant education

  Bilingual Education; Latinx Communities

  Transnational Education

  Languages: English and Spanish

• Recent & Selected Publications

  In press. (Sarah Gallo). “Transborder Pedagogies of the Home in Contexts of Forced Repatriation.” Ethnography and Education.

  In press. (Gabrielle Oliveira and Sarah Gallo). “ ‘I Have a Story for You’ : Im/migrant Children’s Politicized Funds of Knowledge and the Role of the Researcher.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.

  2021. (Sarah Gallo). “Mixed-Status Siblings Now in Mexico: How U.S. Documentation and Transborder Experiences Shape Pathways Across Borders.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly.

  2020. (Johanna Dreby, Sarah Gallo, Florencia Silveira and Melissa Adams Corral). “Nací allá: Meanings of U.S. Citizenship for Young Children of Return Migrants to Mexico.” Harvard Educational Review 90 (4): 573-597.

  2020. (Sarah Gallo and Andrea Ortiz). “Broaching Unauthorized (Im)migration in Mexican Primary Schools. Teachers College Record 122 (8): 1-40.

  2018. (Sarah Gallo and Meghan Dabkowski). “The Permanence of Departure: Young Mexican Immigrant Students’ Discursive Negotiations of Imagined Childhoods Allá.” Linguistics and Education 45: 92-100.

  2017. (Holly Link, Sarah Gallo, and Stanton Wortham). “The Production of Schoolchildren as Enlightenment Subjects.” American Educational Research Journal, 54(5): 834-867.

  2017. (Sarah Gallo and Nancy Hornberger). “Immigration Policy as Language Policy: Mexican Families’ Decision-Making in Search of Biliteracy for their Children.” International Journal of Bilingualism 21 (2): 1 – 14.

  2016. (Sarah Gallo). “Humor in Father-Daughter Immigration Narratives of Resistance.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 47 (3): 279-296.

  2016. (Sarah Gallo and Holly Link). “Exploring the Borderlands: Elementary School Teachers’ Navigation of Immigration Practices in a New Latino Diaspora Community.” Journal of Latinos and Education 15 (3): 180-196.

  2016. (Obed Arango, Sofia Flores, Sarah Gallo, María Lara, Holly Link, H., Diana Arreguín and Itzel Peregrina. “Un trago dulce pero adentro con sabor amargo / A Bittersweet Swallow: Constructing Counterspaces to Explore Undocumented Status across Academic, Family, and Community Spaces.” Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education: Studies of Migration, Integration, Equity, and Cultural Survival 10 (4): 228-241.

  2015. (Sarah Gallo and Holly Link). “’Diles la verdad’: Deportation Policies, Politicized Funds of Knowledge, and Schooling in Middle Childhood.” Harvard Educational Review 85 (3): 357-382.

  2014. (Sarah Gallo). “The Effects of Gendered Immigration Enforcement on Middle Childhood and Schooling.” American Educational Research Journal 51 (3): 473 – 504.

  2014. (Sarah Gallo, Holly Link, Elaine Allard, Stanton Wortham, and Katherine Mortimer). “Conflicting Ideologies of Mexican Immigrant English across Levels of Schooling.” International Multilingual Research Journal 8 (2): 124-140.

  2014. (Elaine Allard, Katherine Mortimer, Sarah Gallo, Holly Link, and Stanton Wortham). “Immigrant Spanish as Liability or Asset?: Generational Diversity in Language Ideologies at School.” Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 13 (5): 335-353.

• Honors & Awards

  2021- present: Planning Committee Member and Faculty Fellow of Community-Engaged Anti-Racist (CEAR) Education Project: Mary Curran and Nora Hyland, PIs.

  2018 – 2020 Co-Principal Investigator, National Geographic, “Ethnographic Mosaic of Migrant Children Experiences in the Americas” : Valentina Glockner, PI

  2017 – 2018 Post-Doctoral Fellowship Recipient: National Academy of Education / Spencer Foundation

  2016 Fulbright Recipient: U.S. Scholar Grant for Mexico

  2015 – 2016 Faculty Fellow, Office of Diversity and Inclusion in the College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University

  2011 – 2012 Dissertation Fellowship Recipient, National Academy of Education / Spencer Foundations

  2011 Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in Cultural Anthropology

• Resume

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