Francisca Sánchez

(she/her)

President

Francisca Sánchez is a poet, “word weaver,” long-time educator, and former English Learner. After a long career in education, Francisca has returned to her passion, poetry and the arts. She has been writing poetry for five decades, but only within the last decade has she begun to take her poetry public. In 2013, she published When I Dream/Cuando Sueño, the adaptation of one of her poems into a bilingual children’s book, illustrated by her son, Nicolás Sánchez, a visual artist. When I Dream/Cuando Sueño was selected by the New York City Public Schools as book of the month. Currently, she is working on two new books, both adaptations of her poetry: We Were There When and We Dance, We Dance, We Dance. 

Francisca is also CEO of Provocative Practice™, an educational consultant organization. She retired several years ago as Associate Superintendent for Educational Services with Hayward Unified School District. She has served in a variety of leadership, administrative, and teaching positions at the district, county office, regional, and state levels, including as Chief Academic Officer for San Francisco Unified School District and Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction with the San Bernardino County Office of Education. She also served two terms as president of the California Association for Bilingual and recently served on the Executive Board of the National Association for Bilingual Education. She was selected as a Senior Fellow with the Education Trust West, and is president of her local CABE chapter. In addition to her work with CONTRA-TIEMPO, she serves on the boards Scaling Student Success, and the East Side Education Foundation, and is president of her local CABE chapter.

In recognition of her continuing contributions to education, she was awarded a Presidential Excellence Medallion from CSU, San Bernardino in 2002, named as 2002 Inland Empire Educator of the Year, and inducted into the East Side Union High School District Hall of Fame in 2003. Francisca has been named to a number of influential national and state task forces and served for many years as a member of the state-wide Curriculum & Instruction Steering Committee, where she was the chair for the Visual and Performing Arts Subcommittee. She was selected as the recipient of ACSA’s 2005 State Valuing Diversity Award and CABE’s 2006 Vision Award.

Five years ago, she created MOSAAIC, an intensive Arabic language, arts, and culture summer program for students, mostly Latino, in her community of Patterson, CA, and directs this program each summer. The program is an opportunity for youth to experience language, culture, and the arts beyond their local community.

Francisca graduated magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, completed her M.A. at San José State University, and completed her doctoral studies (ABD) in Sociolinguistics at Stanford University.