Vivian Mihalakis
Vivian Mihalakis has been a Fellow at the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh working with the Disciplinary Literacy English language Arts team since 2005. She currently co-leads the English language arts Disciplinary Literacy work. Since joining the Institute, she has worked with various school districts including Fort Worth Independent School District, Grand Rapids Public School, Los Angeles Unified School District, Minneapolis Public School, and New York City Department of Education to improve the teaching and learning of English language arts. This work has included developing and supporting teachers to develop English language arts units for secondary school classrooms, designing and implementing professional development for English language arts coaches, and supporting teachers to develop embedded assessment tasks for use at the school and district level. Before coming to the Institute, Mihalakis worked in both public and private, and urban and rural schools as an English language arts teacher. She has taught English language arts to students from middle school through college, and taught secondary English language arts methods courses to Masters of Arts in Teaching and Professional Year students at the University of Pittsburgh. Mihalakis earned her B.A. from Allegheny College, her M.A. in Education from Lehigh University, and her Ph.D. from University of Pittsburgh.