Marina Santos
CCEE Governing Board Member
Marina is an English teacher at Fresno High School, the first high school in the Fresno Unified School District. Her extensive teaching experience dates back to the early 2000s, when she began tutoring at Fresno High as a Fresno State English tutor under the supervision of Dr. Kathleen Godfrey, Professor of English and Director of the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project. Marina’s student experience with secondary teachers and low-income students inspired her to pursue a teaching credential. Marina’s teaching career began at a local public charter school for at-risk, marginalized students. There, she created her own English curriculum, taught English, coached girls’ basketball, and coordinated school-wide assessments. This experience showed her how high student transiency and poverty can be ameliorated by wrap-around resources that can have a huge positive impact on students.
Shortly after, Marina enrolled in a Masters of Education/Administrative Credential program at Fresno Pacific University (FPU). An FPU instructor encouraged her to accept a teaching position at Dinuba High School, a rural school. It was at Dinuba High School where Marina evolved into a writing teacher. She was invited to the 2013 Invitational Summer Institute, a program offered by the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project. The Writing Project rejuvenated her commitment to the power of writing in the classroom and highlighted the importance of advocating for teachers who do not have access to quality professional development opportunities.
As a result of building relationships with other literacy leaders, published authors, and education consultants, she was entrusted with chairing the Yosemite Conference, a literacy conference that provided focused, professional learning opportunities across disciplines. Marina organized the conference from concept to execution in 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2019. Some of her proudest moments occur when new teachers express the idea that they will definitely use something that they have learned in their classrooms.
Marina’s advocacy for English teachers has expanded into advocacy for all teachers as a Fresno Teachers Association (FTA) Director-at-Large. Her voice in FTA has come to be valued and has landed her on Fresno Unified’s Assessment Council and gotten her elected to the California Teachers Association as a delegate. As a CTA delegate, her fellow members of the Assessment Council have chosen her to serve as chair. Through her chairmanship, she presented to California educators four times a year in Los Angeles, provided testing feedback on student score reporting to the California Department of Education (CDE), and helped shape policy related to screening for reading difficulties. Her extensive work on assessment and testing led to her appointment on the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence by Assemblymember Robert Rivas.
When Marina was called upon to act for the benefit of her community, she found ways to do so on both the local and the state level. Marina lobbied in Sacramento for Assembly Bill 2901, the Pregnancy Leave for Educators Act. Her lobbying team met with fourteen senators and assembly members, and her team’s efforts garnered four coauthors for the bill. As a result of her teaching and leadership, Marina has been featured in two CTA Educator magazines. One feature highlights a COVID-19 pandemic project entitled “Carrying Stories,” which was a combination of storytelling and art that showed how students improved their sense of mental well-being, helped them develop higher self-esteem, stronger familial cohesion, and a better sense of control over their lives.
When Marina is away from the classroom, she takes pleasure in hiking local trails, spending time with her daughter Marcela, and volunteering at a local homeless shelter. She resides in Fresno, California, her hometown, where she is committed to eradicating generational poverty through literacy and her public service.
Shortly after, Marina enrolled in a Masters of Education/Administrative Credential program at Fresno Pacific University (FPU). An FPU instructor encouraged her to accept a teaching position at Dinuba High School, a rural school. It was at Dinuba High School where Marina evolved into a writing teacher. She was invited to the 2013 Invitational Summer Institute, a program offered by the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project. The Writing Project rejuvenated her commitment to the power of writing in the classroom and highlighted the importance of advocating for teachers who do not have access to quality professional development opportunities.
As a result of building relationships with other literacy leaders, published authors, and education consultants, she was entrusted with chairing the Yosemite Conference, a literacy conference that provided focused, professional learning opportunities across disciplines. Marina organized the conference from concept to execution in 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2019. Some of her proudest moments occur when new teachers express the idea that they will definitely use something that they have learned in their classrooms.
Marina’s advocacy for English teachers has expanded into advocacy for all teachers as a Fresno Teachers Association (FTA) Director-at-Large. Her voice in FTA has come to be valued and has landed her on Fresno Unified’s Assessment Council and gotten her elected to the California Teachers Association as a delegate. As a CTA delegate, her fellow members of the Assessment Council have chosen her to serve as chair. Through her chairmanship, she presented to California educators four times a year in Los Angeles, provided testing feedback on student score reporting to the California Department of Education (CDE), and helped shape policy related to screening for reading difficulties. Her extensive work on assessment and testing led to her appointment on the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence by Assemblymember Robert Rivas.
When Marina was called upon to act for the benefit of her community, she found ways to do so on both the local and the state level. Marina lobbied in Sacramento for Assembly Bill 2901, the Pregnancy Leave for Educators Act. Her lobbying team met with fourteen senators and assembly members, and her team’s efforts garnered four coauthors for the bill. As a result of her teaching and leadership, Marina has been featured in two CTA Educator magazines. One feature highlights a COVID-19 pandemic project entitled “Carrying Stories,” which was a combination of storytelling and art that showed how students improved their sense of mental well-being, helped them develop higher self-esteem, stronger familial cohesion, and a better sense of control over their lives.
When Marina is away from the classroom, she takes pleasure in hiking local trails, spending time with her daughter Marcela, and volunteering at a local homeless shelter. She resides in Fresno, California, her hometown, where she is committed to eradicating generational poverty through literacy and her public service.