Education

Fuentes-Packnick focuses on cultural, racial competence during education journey

Kaela Fuentes-Packnick teaches a First-Year Seminar class in the Penn State College of Education. Credit: Annemarie Mountz. All Rights Reserved.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In the 1940s, the author Thomas Wolfe wrote the famous adage, “You can’t go home again.” Kaela Fuentes-Packnick, a postdoctoral scholar in anti-racist and inclusive pedagogy in the Penn State College of Education, has proven that saying wrong over and over. Throughout her trajectory at Penn State, which started in high school, she has developed a vision for racial equity and inclusion that she hopes to instill in the next generation of educators.

“I’ve seen the college from so many angles over my many years here,” said Fuentes-Packnick, who received her doctorate from the College of Education in May and started her postdoctoral position this fall. “I feel like I have a unique perspective having been a high school student, undergraduate and graduate student, and a deep well of motivation to help it continue to grow and work toward becoming an anti-racist program.”

Fuentes-Packnick, a native of Easton, got her first taste of Nittany Lion pride when, at age 16, she participated in the Summer College Opportunity Program in Education, a program under the College of Education that provides current high school sophomores from diverse backgrounds an opportunity to experience college coursework and learn about careers in the education field.

“I came to campus, lived on campus for five weeks, fell in love with the College of Education — that was it for me,” said Fuentes-Packnick. “Every (other) school that I looked at, (Penn State) was just the bar for which I measured all other schools.”

For Fuentes-Packnick, who identifies as biracial Asian-American (her father is Filipino and her mother is white), the S.C.O.P.E. program was an eye-opener in the sense that it was the first time she “saw so many people who looked like me pursuing degrees in education and it was the first time I learned what you could do with a Ph.D. Up until that point, the only people I knew who had Ph.D.s in education were school principals and superintendents and honestly, overwhelmingly, white men.”

When it came time to choose a university, there was little doubt in Fuentes-Packnick’s mind about where she belonged. Her S.C.O.P.E. experience had instilled in her a sense of community and belonging, which she said was particularly important for her as a person of color.

“I think that was the beauty of doing S.C.O.P.E., a lot of my S.C.O.P.E. siblings ended up coming to Penn State and the College of Education. I was coming into this family that already existed for me. Penn State is a predominantly white institution (a term describing institutions of higher learning where white persons account for 50% or greater of the student enrollment) and that can be really, really overwhelming for students of color to find a space where they feel they belong and they feel they’re supported. For me, I knew I would be able to find that.”

Fuentes-Packnick found additional support by getting involved with the Office of Education and Social Equity, which works to foster equity and inclusion by creating educational opportunities and experiences, raising awareness and developing strategies and tools to enhance intercultural, racial/ethnic competence.

Upon arriving at Penn State, Fuentes-Packnick knew where she wanted to focus her studies. She decided to major in special education and was in the first cohort in the Special Education and Curriculum Instruction with Emphasis in Language and Literacy Education Integrated Undergraduate-Graduate Degree. The program consists of integration of required courses for a bachelor of science in special education with courses required for certification as a reading specialist and a master of education in curriculum and instruction with emphasis in language and literacy education.

Like many individuals who choose to go into special education, Fuentes-Packnick found her calling through personal family experiences. As the oldest of three children, she has a younger sister, Ariel Steffy, an alumna of Penn State Berks, and a younger brother, Nick. At some point during their childhood, the family recognized that Nick was encountering difficulties at school due to undiagnosed cognitive disabilities. He was eventually diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and auditory processing disorder, Fuentes-Packnick said, but “it was a fight to get him identified — the school did not believe he was struggling enough.”

One of the reasons that Asian-American students with disabilities struggle to be heard, Fuentes-Packnick said, is their reputation as a “model minority” — a term that has often been used to refer to a minority group perceived as particularly successful. In addition, parents may perceive stigma attached to their children being identified as having a disability. Fuentes-Packnick said that she sees that cultural vacuum as an opportunity to identify and address the expectations and norms within school systems that aren’t culturally responsive.

“Seeing differences between the public school system and what a private school for students with learning disabilities was able to offer (to Nick) made me recognize limitations of the public school system. But it made me wonder, are there ways I can change the structure and expectations within my own classroom to ensure more of my students are successful?”

While enrolled as an undergraduate student at Penn State, Fuentes-Packnick had the opportunity to support a few professors with their research. Not only was she able to get a glimpse into how research is conducted behind the scenes, but also she started to integrate research into her personal vision of how she could make a difference as an educator.

“I could see how personal educational research could be,” she said. “All the projects were really important to professors, and it made me excited about the prospect of doing things I’m passionate about, problems I’ve experienced myself.”

After graduating from Penn State with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 2011, Fuentes-Packnick took a position as a teacher at Grove School, a therapeutic boarding school in Madison, Connecticut. She said she related to the school’s philosophy of putting academics — rather than solely therapeutics — at the forefront.

“In looking back at it, a lot of my master’s paper centered on the importance of building relationships with students and families, that those positive relationships can help create a more supportive learning environment,” she said. “Those values I learned during my master’s program really influenced my decision to take a job at Grove because that was something that they prioritized at the school. The teamwork between teachers, students, administrators, therapists and families was something that I wanted to be a part of.”

Fuentes-Packnick’s experience teaching in Connecticut was more than just a time of professional growth — she met her now-husband, Steve, who also was a teacher at the school. They married in 2016, a month into starting her doctoral program at Penn State. Steve Packnick is currently Department Chair of History and Social Studies at Grier School, a boarding and day school for girls in grades seven through 12, located in Birmingham, Pennsylvania.

After teaching at Grove School for five years, Fuentes-Packnick decided she wanted to delve deeper into the educational research she was first exposed to as an undergraduate. While teaching, she had noticed how often her middle schoolers did not identify themselves as readers.

“So when I was thinking about the research I hoped to do in a doctoral program, I already knew that the faculty here in the college were doing phenomenal work in areas I was interested in,” she said.

She enrolled in the doctoral program in language, culture and society in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in 2016 and upon returning to University Park, revisited the idea of academic research being personal and passionate versus purely analytical.

Toward the end of Fuentes-Packnick’s second year in her doctoral program, she took the dis/ability critical race studies course taught by Kathleen Collins, associate professor of education (literacies and English language) that “completely changed the trajectory of my work.”

“She exposed me to an entire field of study that was working to answer so many questions that I had about race, ethnicity and disability in education and aligned with the ways that I view and think about education. Dr. Collins and my adviser, Dr. Ashley Patterson, helped me see ways that I could connect my personal and family experiences with things that I saw in my own classroom and help contribute to a growing field that was also asking questions about how Asian-American students with disabilities may be experiencing schooling.”

The title of Fuentes-Packnick’s dissertation was “Breaking the Model Minority Mold: Storying the Experiences of Asian Americans Labeled Dis/abled.”

“Through my dissertation research, I aimed to bring attention and volume to the stories and experiences of Asian Americans who have struggled within school settings in the hopes of challenging common narratives about Asian-American students and presenting essential perspectives to educators,” she said.

The participants in Fuentes-Packnick’s study were mostly adults in their 20s reflecting on a lifetime of experiences in the educational system.

“I found that across all the participants when reflecting on their schooling experiences, positive or negative, their various social identities came into play,” she said. “When they were surrounded by educators that had made efforts to build positive relationships and work to honor and celebrate their identities, particularly their ethnic identity and educational needs, participants recalled feelings of safety, security and increased self-efficacy. I think that this is an important message for all educators to take — our students need us to work to understand them and their experiences, and honor all of the identities that they bring with them to the classroom.”

According to Patterson, associate professor of education (curriculum and supervision), Fuentes-Packnick exemplifies the most desirable attributes of an educator as well as the College of Education’s ability to nurture students throughout the course of their careers.

“For me, Kaela represents a full-circle success story of what it can mean to truly be a part of the College of Education family,” said Patterson. “To invest in a place that is equally invested in you. Beginning like she did as a high school S.C.O.P.E. student, graduating with degrees from two different departments, coming back for a Ph.D. and now staying on as a post-doc … it’s confirmation for me that the college is a place where learners can identify their passions and continue to cultivate them, because someone as bright and as driven as Kaela is really could take her talents anywhere she desired. We are fortunate for having had her choose us.”

Now, as a postdoctoral scholar in anti-racist pedagogy, Fuentes-Packnick is challenging the conventional model of a postdoc by incorporating a practitioner focus in addition to research. She also has continued to play a role in OESE. Last year, after receiving an Equity Fund grant, she created the Academic Equity program. The program provides 1:1 academic support to students in OESE and runs monthly workshops on academic skills for all students in the college.

“Kaela is well-positioned to lead programmatic efforts toward furthering our understanding and practice around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging issues," said María Schmidt, assistant dean for education and social equity. “Partnering with faculty, students and staff, we will identify and highlight areas of opportunity to craft and implement innovative DEIB professional development initiatives across all areas of the college community.”

In keeping with the college strategic plan, which is heavily focused on racial equity and social justice, she is working to bring more inclusive practices into all of the college’s courses. One of her primary roles as a postdoctoral scholar is to work with first-year seminar instructors to bring a more equity-minded focus into seminars, a “first building block that will influence other courses.”

Having come through the Penn State College of Education as a high school S.C.O.P.E. participant, an undergraduate, master’s and doctoral student, and now a postdoctoral scholar, Fuentes-Packnick has lived in State College for 11 years. She has a history and connection with the college that she sees not as a distinct chapter of her life but rather as the foundation for what she hopes will be a lifelong Penn State journey.

“I would love any opportunity to be able to continue this work and give back to the college,” she said. “I would love to be able to be that mentor and that support for future students coming up behind me.”

Last Updated November 15, 2022

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