Nieto, Sonia (1943-)

Sonia Nieto, a prominent author in the field of multicultural education, is Professor Emérita of Language, Literacy and Culture in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she taught from 1980 until her retirement in 2005. One of her most significant contributions to education is her conceptual work in which she places bilingual education within multicultural education. Previously, these two fields had been seen as parallel routes to equity and enhanced education for minority group children. Nieto's education, career, and awards are described in this entry.

Born in 1943 in Brooklyn, New York, to Esther and Federico Cortés, Sonia Nieto began her education in the New York City public schools speaking only Spanish. She experienced firsthand the difficulties of learning English as a second language in a climate of discrimination and low expectations of language minority children. However, her mother and father, proud of their Puerto Rican culture, ignored pressure to speak only English and continued to speak Spanish in the home. By high school, Sonia Nieto was in honors classes.

Nieto received a BS in elementary education from St. John's University in 1965. She received her MA in Spanish and Hispanic literature in 1966 from the New York University Graduate Year in Madrid, Spain. That year, she began her career in teaching as a junior high school teacher of English and Spanish in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville community in Brooklyn, and in 1968 became a fourth-grade bilingual teacher at PS. 25 in the Bronx, the first completely bilingual school in the Northeast and one of the first in the country to be funded by the new Title VII, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Bilingual Education Program. Her first position in higher education was as an instructor in the Puerto Rican Studies Department at Brooklyn College, where she worked in a joint program in bilingual education with the School of Education. In 1975, she and her family moved to Massachusetts, where she earned her doctoral degree in curriculum studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with special concentrations in multicultural and bilingual education.

Her work on the areas of multicultural and bilingual education is explicated in her book, Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, now in its fourth edition. Her books and articles are used widely in multicultural education and professional development courses. The National [Page 604]Association for Multicultural Education recognized her work with its Educator of the Year Award in 1997. She also received the New England Educator of the Year Award from Region One of the same organization in 1998.

In addition to multicultural and bilingual education, Nieto's scholarly work has focused on teacher education; curriculum reform; Puerto Rican children's literature; and the education of Latinos, immigrants, and other culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. Her books include What Keeps Teachers Going? (2003), Language, Culture and Teaching: Critical Perspectives for a New Century (2002), and The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities (1999). She edited Why We Teach (2005) and Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Schools (2000). She has also written chapters and articles on these issues in journals such as Educational Leadership, Theory Into Practice, The Harvard Educational Review, and Multicultural Education.

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