Ericka Canon

Ericka Canon (she/her)  is a graduate student pursuing her PhD at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education with a specialization in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education. She graduated from Emory University in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and Linguistics, where she discovered a passion for educating others about Black Latinx culture and language. As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, she studied the racialization of Puerto Ricans from the South Bronx and how that influenced their language practices. Her desire for teaching continued after college as a public school social studies teacher, where she spent the last five years working with students and their families at Title I schools. In 2024, she was awarded Outstanding Social Studies Teacher in the district and Teacher of the Year at her school. She aims to focus her research on the racialization of Black Latinx and ELL students in American public schools and how the co-naturalization of race and language in schools is perpetuated. Her ultimate goal is to find ways to support Black ELL and Latinx students in schools, but also educate communities on the history of Blackness in Latin America.