Wilson College Online Blog

Most college students haven’t played Simon Says for a long time. But in her Teaching English Language Learners class, Daniela DiGregorio, Ph.D., associate professor of education at Wilson College, makes this simple childhood game a crucial part of the curriculum.

“First, we play it in English. Then, we play it in Spanish,” she said, explaining that she uses gestures as she instructs students to touch their heads, noses, and so on. “Because Spanish is so close to English, there are a lot of cognates. They are able to pick up on it. But then, I switch into Czech.” At this point, DiGregorio also stops using gestures, leaving her students baffled.

It might seem like cheating, but she’s not trying to keep up her winning streak. She’s proving a point.

“I want them to experience what it’s like when you don’t understand anything and nobody’s helping with gestures and visuals,” DiGregorio said. “Can you imagine being like this for eight hours at school?”

This is the reality for countless English language learners across the country. But in Wilson College Online’s education programs, DiGregorio teaches future educators how to overcome language barriers and give every student a chance at success.

Discovering a Love for Languages and Teaching

Born in Czechia (also known as the Czech Republic), DiGregorio grew up speaking Czech, but started learning Russian in the fifth grade. In high school, she began to study English and fell in love with it. She graduated with a diploma in all three languages plus art, another one of her passions.

Inspired by her teachers, DiGregorio then pursued a double bachelor’s in art and teaching English as a foreign language. After graduation, she worked for four years as an English teacher in a private Czech high school where she prioritized learning through immersion.

“I was fortunate enough to organize two study-abroad trips to London,” she said. “It was a really great experience.”

To deepen her own understanding of both the English language and teaching it, she spent summers in England, worked as a nanny, and even traveled to the United States to work as an exchange teacher at a summer camp.

Around this time, DiGregorio met her husband. After living in Europe for a year, they settled down in Pennsylvania where, in 2002, DiGregorio earned her Master of Art in Art Education and an English as a second language (ESL) teacher certification.

Bringing Her Perspective to the American Education System

After earning her master’s degree, DiGregorio worked as an ESL curriculum specialist for a North Eastern Intermediate Unit (NEIU 19) in Pennsylvania. She provided professional development to teachers and taught English language learners from different schools.

“I just made this connection with my students because, as an English language learner myself, I understood where they were coming from,” she said. “I had students who were from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, China, Ethiopia, and Turkey.” She also worked with children who had been adopted from Russia and Ukraine.

Bolstered by this experience, DiGregorio pursued her Ph.D. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Composition at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She wrote her dissertation about second language acquisition of internationally adopted children.

“It was a small study of six students of different ages. There were three elementary students and then three were high school students,” she said. “I compared their second language acquisition as well as maintenance of their first language.”

DiGregorio discovered that while the older adopted students retained their control of Russian due to their well-developed literacy skills in their native language, the younger students largely lost Russian and became monolingual in English. With these insights and a passion for figuring out how to serve all types of learners, DiGregorio set her sights on higher education.

Finding a Home at Wilson College

By the time DiGrigorio brought her passion and expertise to Wilson College in 2018, she had about 20 years of education experience and eight years in college instruction. When she arrived, she began to work on developing the Master in TESOL with ESL certification program that now prepares students to become certified English as a second language teachers in Pennsylvania.

Additionally, DiGregorio was instrumental in bringing many of Wilson College’s education courses online and implementing a hands-on TESOL practicum. Since then, she’s spread her expertise to her students in the classroom and beyond.

Making Teacher Education Practical and Impactful

Today, online and on-campus students at Wilson will find DiGregorio teaching Educational Psychology, Language and Culture, Teaching English Language Learners, TESOL Instructional Methods and Assessment, and similar classes. But in each one, her goal is the same: to educate pre-service teachers on how to empower their own students.

“If we don’t help them in the classrooms, who else will, right?” she said. “It can be very traumatic, especially for the small kids, if the teachers don’t know how to provide assistance.”

To that end, DiGregorio emphasizes practical yet impactful practices in the classroom. This includes using gestures and translation software and leveraging community resources for students in need. Activities such as playing Simon Says add a visceral and memorable component to these lessons, so her students will always remember how important these skills are.

Building Bridges Between Wilson and the World

While DiGregorio is active on campus, she still finds time to attend language teaching and education conferences in the U.S. and abroad. Even though she’s often a speaker at these events, DiGregorio always walks away with new knowledge.

“Attending professional development conferences is like me taking classes and learning new things for research,” DiGregorio said. She’s been to Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Hong Kong and multiple places across Europe. Recently, attending a conference in Budapest resulted in DiGregorio and her Wilson colleague Janet Foor collaborating to write a chapter for a book on teaching English to learners with disabilities.

However, DiGrigorio doesn’t develop international connections just for her own personal enrichment; she also organizes study-abroad trips for her students and colleagues. And whenever she hears of a conference she thinks might benefit her students, she lets them know about opportunities to attend in person or virtually—sometimes for extra credit.

Gain the Skills You Need to Give Every Student the Support They Deserve

Over the past seven years, Daniela DiGrigorio, Ph.D., has become a pillar of Wilson College’s education programs. She’s added a new degree program to the school’s offerings; given a fresh, up-close perspective to the curriculum; and helped forge relationships between Wilson and organizations across the globe.

But while those are amazing accomplishments, DiGregorio has a much bigger goal in mind in her role as an associate professor of education, one she works toward every time she enters a classroom with the next generation of educators.

“I wanted to teach at Wilson because I knew I could make a larger impact on this population, the marginalized students,” she said. “They really need help.”

To find out more about Wilson College Online’s bachelor’s and master’s education degree programs, request more information today.

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