Shelley Wong

A fifth generation Chinese American from California, Dr. Shelley Wong began her career teaching English at a girls' middle school in Hong Kong where she went to study Cantonese and learn about her cultural roots. She went on to teach English as a Second Language in adult school, high school, community college, university intensive English programs, and teacher education programs in California, Ohio, New York, and the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. She has also taught ESL/Bilingual classes for community organizations, churches and trade unions.

Dr. Wong was President of TESOL International (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) and served on the Executive Committee of TESOL from 2007-2010. She has been involved in collaborative literacy research projects with Reading Recovery, elementary and English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers in elementary schools in Arlington, Prince George County and in Fairfax, Virginia.

Currently an Associate Professor Emerita at George Mason University in the College of Education and Human Development, she previously taught at the University of Maryland, and at the Ohio State University. She earned her BA in Sociology at the University of California at Santa Cruz (U.C.S.C.); her California teaching credentials, TESL certificate and MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from UCLA; and her Ed.D. in Applied Linguistics from Columbia Teachers College in New York. Most recently Shelley was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Birzeit University in the Palestinian Occupied West Bank.