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.