Meet the Faculty: MA Teaching South Bay
Situated at De Anza Community College, the USF South Bay program intends to engage candidates in transformative education that is built upon humanizing relationships and a commitment to social justice. We prepare candidates with a deepened social consciousness so that they understand the complexities and challenges around teaching, and leave our program with the pedagogical and curricular tools to work toward a just, humane, and healthy world.
Dr. Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a native of California who has taught in elementary schools in Santa Barbara and San Jose as well as New York City. Her research focuses on critical literacy, equitable practices, and social justice teaching and learning. She recently published the books Preparing to Teach Social Studies for Social Justice: Becoming a Renegade and Social Studies, Literacy and Social Justice in the Common Core Classrooms: A Guide for Teachers (Teachers College Press), Planting the Seeds of Equity: Ethnic Studies and Social Justice in the K–2 Classroom and she is a founding member and vice-president of the National Association of Multicultural Education, California Chapter.
Dr. Farima Pour-Khorshid is a proud Bay Area educator-organizer-scholar. After teaching at the elementary level for over a decade in the Hayward Unified School District, as well as teaching university courses, supervising pre-service teachers, and facilitating teacher development throughout Nicaragua where her mother's family emigrated from, she is now an assistant professor and teacher supervisor at the University of San Francisco. She holds leadership roles with San Francisco’s Teachers 4 Social Justice (www.T4SJ.org), the People’s Education Movement-Bay Area, the national Education for Liberation Network (www.edliberation.org) and the Radical Healing Summit at Flourish Agenda. Her research interests and areas of expertise include grassroots social justice teacher organizing, critical professional development, critical racial affinity groups and radical healing approaches to support educators within the field.
