{"id":3654,"date":"2016-05-01T19:33:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T03:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=3654"},"modified":"2016-05-01T19:33:54","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T03:33:54","slug":"maria-dantas-whitney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/maria-dantas-whitney\/","title":{"rendered":"Maria Dantas-Whitney"},"content":{"rendered":"
By:Chelsea Hunt\r\nGuest Contributor<\/pre>\n
A large poster of her hometown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, leans up against a wall in Maria Dantas-Whitney\u2019s office. Lining surfaces are colorful, miscellaneous objects given by international students to this professor of both English for Speakers of Other Languages and Bilingual Education.<\/p>\n
They reflect her colorful personality, said friend and colleague Tracy Smiles.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s always bright and friendly,\u201d said Smiles.<\/p>\n
From her professional pursuits to her mentoring, collaboration is just the way Dantas-Whitney lives her life. It\u2019s one of the reasons she came to Western Oregon University to teach. She felt that she would work well with the other professors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a really good fit,\u201d said Dantas-Whitney.<\/p>\n
While at Western, Dantas-Whitney has collaborated with her colleagues to bring in grant money for different projects, most recently the SPELL grant which is now in its final year.<\/p>\n
A colleague congratulated Dantas-Whitney a day before she got the official notification that the grant had been approved to the sum of nearly $2 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big surprise,\u201d said Dantas-Whitney.<\/p>\n
Although Dantas-Whitney is the project director, it was a group effort. Ella Taylor from the Teaching Research Institute helped write the grant, and Carmen Caceda, professor of Teacher Education, has helped with the grant work.<\/p>\n
Project SPELL, which stands for Sustainable Practices for English Language Learners, is a five-year grant that provides federal funding for teachers from Salem-Keizer and Woodburn to get an ESOL endorsement through Western.<\/p>\n
More students today have first languages other than English, so teachers need to know how to help these students succeed, Dantas-Whitney explained.<\/p>\n
Amanda Larsen, who taught in Salem-Keizer, was one of the people who participated in the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving an endorsement in ESOL allows me to use some of the knowledge I gained and help those English language learners that are in my classroom,\u201d said Larsen.<\/p>\n
Larsen found Dantas-Whitney to be an effective advisor for her thesis as she worked towards getting a master\u2019s in ESOL.<\/p>\n
\u201cImmediately you get the impression that she is competent and on top of things,\u201d said Larsen.<\/p>\n
In addition to her competency, Smiles said that Dantas-Whitney\u2019s warm personality sets her students at ease.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve met few people who are as charming and responsive as Maria,\u201d added Smiles.<\/p>\n
For Dantas-Whitney teaching and mentoring are collaborative efforts and this influences the way that she works with students who are writing a thesis.<\/p>\n
She first asks them to look at the areas that interest them because they need to be passionate and curious about their topics.<\/p>\n
Because she is a humble person, as her son Thomas Whitney put it, Dantas-Whitney does not see herself as someone who tells students what they should do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI consider myself a mentor,\u201d said Dantas-Whitney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A large poster of her hometown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, leans up against a wall in Maria Dantas-Whitney\u2019s office. Lining surfaces are colorful, miscellaneous objects given by international students to this professor of both English for Speakers of Other Languages and Bilingual Education.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":3684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}