Dr. González Ybarra’s schooling experiences, and those of her family, guided her to research the rich language, literacies, and knowledge of Chicanx/Latinx communities that often go unseen and/or erased in k-12 classrooms and beyond. Specifically, she looks at the powerful practices of teaching and learning that exist in community spaces and how Chicanx/Latinx bilingual youth, in particular, draw on their home, family, and community knowledge to navigate their sociopolitical worlds. Dr. González Ybarra has been privileged to work with young people across various communities in Illinois, Utah, Colorado, and Texas. Her teaching and work with bilingual pre-service and in-service teachers seeks to create opportunities for transformative educational experiences both in and outside of the classroom. She is committed to working with educators, students, and community members to collectively to re-imagine and build educational spaces and opportunities for youth and communities of color.

Dr. González Ybarra is a proud University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign alumni. She graduated as a double-major in Latina/Latino Studies and Spanish in 2011. She then earned her masters degree from the University of Utah in 2013 and doctorate from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2018. She is a former Cultivating New Voices Fellow through the National Council of Teachers of English and was a recipient of the AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship.