Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica Transforms Research Into Action as School Board Trustee

Prof. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica has been sworn into the Woodland Joint Unified School District (WJUSD) Board of Trustees, marking the start of her first term. An expert in educational equity and a UC Davis alumna, Rodriguez-Mojica’s appointment represents an exciting opportunity to bridge the gap between academic research and grassroots reform in the local community.

As a scholar and former elementary school teacher who has dedicated her career to studying how teachers can best support English language learners, Rodriguez-Mojica sees her new trustee role as a way to directly impact classroom practices. “This feels like a natural next step,” she said. “I’m excited to draw tangible connections from my research to the community, and give back to the teachers, parents, and students who are actively building inclusive learning spaces.”

While serving on the WJUSD Board of Trustees, Rodriguez-Mojica plans to center student well-being in her work. Through this lens, her goals are to inform policy-related decisions with student perspectives, increase the number of graduates who meet UC and CSU enrollment requirements, expand student opportunities to engage with trades, and increase the number of licensed health professionals on K-12 campuses. Rodriguez-Mojica hopes that all of these efforts will culminate in greater community collaboration that strengthens two-way communication between school representatives and local stakeholders.

Central to her research is the Bilingual/Biliterate Instruction for Bilingual Youth project, a $2.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition to support Spanish-English bilingual instruction in California and New Mexico. As Principal Investigator and Project Director, Rodriguez-Mojica works with a team of researchers to host online teacher workshops that address strategies for supporting bilingual learners, collaborating with students’ caregivers, and building culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies.

Rodriguez-Mojica recently co-authored two papers on translanguaging assessment methods and Spanish-English reading materials and provided recommendations for improving both of these resources. Her goal is to support teachers’ development so that they can consistently work to identify multilingual students’ strengths and provide asset-based instruction that evolves with their learning.