Zamora, Gloria L. (1935–2001)

Gloria L. Zamora, born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1935, was a national leader and pioneer in the field of early childhood bilingual education. Upon completing her BS degree in elementary education at Incarnate Word College in 1956, Zamora taught first grade in San Antonio's Westside barrios for 14 years, at a time when Texas law forbade the use of a language other than English in the classroom. Zamora later wrote that upon realizing that her mostly Spanish-speaking students needed understandable instruction in their native language in order to learn, she decided to just “close the classroom door and break the law!”

In the absence of established guidelines for bilingual and English as a Second Language teaching, Zamora created developmentally appropriate dual-language approaches that were effective in helping students achieve academically. Her unique success in teaching English language learners led to her selection by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory as a demonstration teacher for a pilot bilingual education program in the San Antonio Independent School District from 1964 to 1968. Following this, Zamora drew on lessons learned from her classroom experience to help create and disseminate proven models for early childhood bilingual education. From 1968 to 1970, Zamora served as staff development specialist within this same district, being responsible for developing a pilot bilingual education program 5 years prior to the passage of the first bilingual education law in Texas. In 1969, Zamora was selected as demonstration teacher for a summer training institute cosponsored by the University of Texas and Trinity University. From 1970 to 1973, she directed the bilingual education and kindergarten programs in the Edgewood Independent School District, leading efforts to create innovative bilingual approaches that would set the standard for others in the state and nation seeking to improve educational outcomes for language minority students.

Zamora's impact on the emerging field of bilingual education deepened as she pursued advanced graduate studies and began to teach at the university level. From 1969 to 1974, she taught courses in curriculum development for bilingual education as an adjunct at Our Lady of the Lake University, in San Antonio. Upon completing her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin in 1974, she accepted a faculty position in early childhood education at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In 1977, she began a long association with the Intercultural Development Research Association in San Antonio, serving first as director of a bilingual preschool curriculum development project and later as director of the LAU Technical Assistance Center, a position that raised her profile as a national leader in the field of bilingual early childhood education.

Because of her unique perspective as a curriculum specialist with expertise in both early childhood and bilingual education, Zamora clearly understood the critical need for appropriate curriculum materials for young bilingual learners. In response to this need, she coauthored Amanecer, a bilingual early childhood curriculum that was adopted by preschool and Head Start programs throughout the United States. She later served as editorial director for the Santillana Publishing [Page 916]Company, a major publisher of bilingual materials in the United States, and authored numerous articles on the subject.

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