Dr. Bernadette Pilar Zermeño (she/ella) is a movement maker, community mobilizer, and early childhood educator. With over twenty years of experience in early education, she is an Adjunct Faculty with EDvance College that will share successes creating, developing and teaching Transitional Kindergarten Programs, literacy and biliteracy cultivation from home to 5th grade, especially within Dual Immersion Programs.

She is passionate about facilitating lifelong learners beginning at the earliest age as a multilingual educator, teaching in PreK-University levels. She is innovative in curriculum creation with expertise in training Pre-K, Transitional and Traditional Kindergarten Teachers, and TK/K Teacher Aides, Teacher Candidates focusing on biliteracy and language development. As a trilingual, multiracial and first generation woman, she received her Doctorate in Educational Leadership with Emphasis in Early Childhood at Mills College and holds an MA in Education with a bilingual multiple subject teaching credential and a BA in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Bernadette is National Board Early Generalist Certified. Bernadette builds open, trust-based relationships with students, caregivers, teammates, and community partners to support all learners, specially dedicated to helping newly arrived students and refugees with foundational social and emotional skills. Her passion and drive to support the earliest learners is taken outside of the walls of TK and into adult settings, focusing on Bay Area Preschool, TK and Kindergarten teachers. She currently works within Oakland Unified as a Multilingual Specialist in the ELLMA and Early Childhood department while also supporting teacher candidates at Alder, Cal State East Bay, Chabot, Merritt, and Las Positas College.

She was a literacy specialist and Preschool and TK professional development provider with FLUENT SEEDS. She is currently working on gaining administration credential and can always be found advocating for the basic needs of the community. She has presented at a national education conference on research focusing on dual language immersion in early education and continues to research new effective ways to support language as an asset. Bernadette has an unbridled passion for early education and developmentally appropriate practices. She served on the California Kindergarten Association Board of Directors as Treasurer for over six years and now is a board member for Forest and Tree.

When not teaching, Bernadette loves to scuba dive with sharks, read anything and everything and watch her children dance ballet folklorico or learn to skateboard. Bernadette truly believes in reflecting and building on assets, just like EDvance!