Susan Hopewell

Susan Hopewell is Associate Professor and current Chair in the division of Equity Bilingualism and Biliteracy. Her research focuses on issues of language, culture, equity, and identity as they impact, or are affected by, biliteracy practices in dual language and maintenance bilingual schools. She is the Executive director of Literacy Squared (literacysquared.org), a comprehensive asset-based biliteracy model widely implemented in grades pre-K to 6th. Dr. Hopewell uses mixed-methods designs to research classroom-based practices with the potential to strengthen biliteracy education for Spanish – English bilingual children in the United States. Currently, she is investigating the role of oracy and the explicit attention to cross-language connections as strategies to build dynamic bilingualism. She is author/co-author of two books (Biliteracy from the Start: Literacy Squared in Action & Biliterate Writing from the Start: The Literacy Squared Approach to Asset-based Writing Instruction) and more than three dozen journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports.

Prior to joining the CU faculty, Dr. Hopewell was a research assistant with the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education where she directed federal teacher preparation grants and served as Assistant Editor of the Bilingual Research Journal. Her K-12 public school teaching experience includes 8 years as a classroom teacher in a dual-language elementary school, and 4 years as the literacy coach in a maintenance bilingual program.