Anaida Colón-Muñiz has dedicated her life’s work to the improvement of educational opportunities for language diverse and poor children, with a special emphasis on the role of teachers and teacher educators. Her foundations began early in her educational career as a Spanish speaking Puerto Rican student raised in New York City, learning to affirm her background, and seeking equity and social justice.
Dr. Colon-Muniz attended Binghamton University (B.S. 1973), Bank Street College of Education (M.S. 1974), and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Ed.D. 1983). After a semester at the University of Salamanca, Spain (1971), she did two independent research studies in Puerto Rico (1972). She completed her administrative credential from CSU Fullerton (1985), a fellowship with the Education Policy Fellowship Program (IEL, 1991), and the Spanish Children’s Literature Institute, University of Madrid Complutense, sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Education and the California Department of Education (1991). In 2017 she was appointed School Development Consultant of Dong An Experimental School Attached to Northeast Normal University in Changchun, China.
Anaida began her 47 year education career in New York City as an elementary bilingual teacher in District 3 in Morningside, the upper West side of Manhattan just below Harlem. Later she was hired by the City School District of New York for a Title VII Trilingual (Spanish, Italian and English) Education Professional Development Grant where she involved master’s degree bilingual in-service teacher candidates in creative curriculum projects. She then served two State Departments of Education in New York, where she liaised with secondary students for the Chancellor’s Office, and later in Massachusetts, where she became Lau Consultant, engaging in the implementation of bilingual education policies and practices with schools. During her doctoral studies, she became a bilingual resource teacher in Holyoke, MA for one of the first dual language desegregation programs in the country. Moving to California, she worked for two major regional federal Title VII bilingual teacher professional development grants, first at Cal State University, Fullerton and then at San Diego State University. She later was bilingual administrator for three Southern California Districts including Rowland Heights, Orange Unified and Santa Ana Unified, developing bilingual programs of excellence, providing state of the art professional development, attaining millions of dollars in grants, monitoring program quality, and ensuring that students, teachers, administrators, and parents were supported.
Anaida joined the Chapman faculty in 1999 and retired with emeritus status in 2020 but continues to serve on PhD committees and in the Paulo Freire Democratic Project. For 20 years, she served in various roles in the Attallah College of Educational Studies. She first coordinated and taught in the Multiple Subject and Bilingual Credential and Master of Arts in Teaching programs for 13 years and later also taught in the PhD program. Most recently, she served as director of community education at Centro Comunitario de Educación in Santa Ana for 7 years, a university-community based effort to bridge the college of education with parents, community members, in-service and pre-service teachers, children, and faculty. While at Chapman, her research interests included bilingual education, language policy in education, critical multicultural teacher education, community education and the civil rights in education affecting Latino youth. Her publications include co-authoring the books Memories of Paulo Freire (Sense Publishers, 2010), a collection of memories of people who knew and emulated the work of Paulo Freire, and Latino Civil Rights in Education: La lucha sigue (Routledge, 2016), narratives of history and struggle in the quest for educational equity and bilingual education. She speaks and consults on critical bilingual multicultural education and community education.
Anaida served as State president for the California Association for Bilingual Education (1998-2002). She was on the board of the Orange County Children’s Therapeutic Arts Center for 8 years, an inclusive bilingual community center that uses the visual and performing arts to support the integration, growth, and engagement of children with disabilities and special needs with general education students. Anaida was also a key consultant in the early development of the El Sol Science and Arts Academy, an award winning dual language school in Santa Ana, where she is currently on its board. Also, an advocate for women’s rights, she has served as national president for the National Conference of Puerto Rican Women (2006-2008) and is currently the SoCal chapter president. She is also a California delegate for Vision 2020, National Women’s Equality Initiative, Drexel University. Currently a board member for the California Council on Teacher Education, over the years Anaida has served as a committee member, conference co-chair, co-chair of the social justice special interest group, and member of California Association of Bilingual Teacher Educators.