Career Dual-Language Educator Named Head of Federal ELL Office

Source: www.edweek.org

By Lesli A. Maxwell on September 13, 2013 11:40 AM

 A veteran bilingual and dual-language educator and former district superintendent has been tapped by the U.S. Department of Education to head up its Office of English Language Acquisition.

 Libia Gil, who currently serves as a vice president for the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, in Chicago, has been named as an assistant deputy secretary and director of OELA. The OELA job has been filled on an interim basis for nearly a year since Rosalinda Barrera resigned last October.

Gil has a rich background in working with English-language learners and designing bilingual and dual-language programs. According to a profile of her that appeared in the January 1997 issue of School Administrator, Gil is the daughter of a Chinese mother and Costa Rican father.

She was a teacher in the Los Angeles district, and moved onto the nearby ABC school district to be a bilingual educator, and later, the coordinator of bilingual and English-as-a-second-language programs. She helped create Spanish, Korean, and Chinese magnet programs in that district, as well as a Portuguese dual-language program. She served in the Seattle school system as the head of bilingual education and assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. Later, she became the superintendent of the Chula Vista elementary school district in San Diego County, right on the Mexican border.

Read more here.