Educator. Scholar. Author.
Dr. Timothy San Pedro is first and foremost a father and a husband, a brother, uncle, and cousin (both familial and earned) to his family and friends turned family. Being in community, teaching and learning with others to envision decolonial futures centering ways of being and knowing that are often left at the margins or excluded from schooling spaces has always been central to San Pedro’s purpose and work. He is Filipino-American born on Shoshone lands and raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation, homelands of the Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d’Oreilles nations. His educational career began as a high school teacher for the Cook Inlet Tribal Council in Anchorage, Alaska, where he learned from youth how to be a compassionate and tribally-centered educator.
Dr. Timothy San Pedro is first and foremost a father and a husband, a brother, uncle, and cousin (both familial and earned) to his family and friends turned family. Being in community, teaching and learning with others to envision decolonial futures centering ways of being and knowing that are often left at the margins or excluded from schooling spaces has always been central to San Pedro’s purpose and work. He is Filipino-American born on Shoshone lands and raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation, homelands of the Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d’Oreilles nations. His educational career began as a high school teacher for the Cook Inlet Tribal Council in Anchorage, Alaska, where he learned from youth how to be a compassionate and tribally-centered educator.
He sought more training to prepare future teachers to fully see and center the racial, cultural, and tribal identities and knowledge’s that youth bring with them everyday into schools. Arizona State University and the surrounding communities embraced his purpose and desire to transform schooling systems and welcomed him into a unique 12th-grade English-Elective course titled “Native American Literature.” It was there that he saw what education could and should be, one that asked students to share their gifts and knowledges through stories and art, where the teacher builds with students the lessons that helped them to know more about themselves and their relations with land, place, and systems.
With the help of foundational mentorship from Drs. Django Paris, Mary Eunice Romero-Little, Simon Ortiz, Teresa McCarty, Beverly Chin and so many others, he earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum Instruction. In his search to find a position that valued and validated his interdisciplinary work (at the intersections of Curriculum and Instruction, Language Arts, Assets-Based Pedagogies, and American Indian Studies), San Pedro took the position of assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University (OSU). In 2019, he earned tenure at OSU and is an associate professor in Critical Studies in Education: Race, Justice, and Equity. San Pedro’s scholarship has transitioned from in-school learning contexts into home and community contexts—understanding the ways that lessons of Indigeneity are taught intergenerationally among Native American families. These lessons offer educators, community members, and parents a more nuanced understanding of what education can and should be for youth, building with his original purposes and intentions to transform educational systems to more fully embrace and see the cultural and tribal contributions of youth and the communities that collectively raise them. Wherever he may physically live, western Montana has always been his connection to home and a big part of where his heart resides.
He sought more training to prepare future teachers to fully see and center the racial, cultural, and tribal identities and knowledge’s that youth bring with them everyday into schools. Arizona State University and the surrounding communities embraced his purpose and desire to transform schooling systems and welcomed him into a unique 12th-grade English-Elective course titled “Native American Literature.” It was there that he saw what education could and should be, one that asked students to share their gifts and knowledges through stories and art, where the teacher builds with students the lessons that helped them to know more about themselves and their relations with land, place, and systems.
With the help of foundational mentorship from Drs. Django Paris, Mary Eunice Romero-Little, Simon Ortiz, Teresa McCarty, Beverly Chin and so many others, he earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum Instruction. In his search to find a position that valued and validated his interdisciplinary work (at the intersections of Curriculum and Instruction, Language Arts, Assets-Based Pedagogies, and American Indian Studies), San Pedro took the position of assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University (OSU). In 2019, he earned tenure at OSU and is an associate professor in Critical Studies in Race, Justice, and Equity. San Pedro’s scholarship has transitioned from in-school learning contexts into home and community contexts—understanding the ways that lessons of Indigeneity are taught intergenerationally among Native American families. These lessons offer educators, community members, and parents a more nuanced understanding of what education can and should be for youth, building with his original purposes and intentions to transform educational systems to more fully embrace and see the cultural and tribal contributions of youth and the communities that collectively raise them. Wherever he may physically live, western Montana has always been his connection to home and a big part of where his heart resides.
