Marie Heath

Dr. Marie Heath has worked in education for 25+ years, serving in roles such as ESL teacher, ESL department head, compliance facilitator, multilingual specialist, curriculum writer, and higher education adjunct. For the last eight years she has served as the ESL coordinator in a North Texas school district that serves over 10,000 emergent bilinguals. Dr. Heath’s experience includes teaching students from around the world in all content areas, but most of her teaching experience has been in working with first-year emergent bilinguals. In her current role as ESL coordinator, she works with campuses to help implement programs to support the success of EBs and leads district wide PLCs. She has presented for various organizations (TxTESOL, ESCs in Texas, UTA, CAST, TCTELA, TMSA, and ASCD), focusing on supportive practices to help EB students thrive and be successful academically, linguistically, and affectively. She also has a featured article in The Middle Level Leader titled “Successful Middle School Newcomer Programs.”

Dr. Heath holds a Master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from University of North Texas and a doctorate degree from Texas A&M Commerce where she researched acculturation for immigrant adolescents and contributing factors for successful bicultural & bilingual integration.

As a child of an immigrant, Dr. Heath lived the experiences of growing up balancing between two cultural worlds and has dedicated her life to help others navigate the beautiful art of grafting multicultural identities. Dr. Heath lives in Plano, TX with her husband, not too far from her seven children and their families, who live within the metroplex.