Erica Caasi
Clinical Assistant Professor
Dr. Erica Caasi is a clinical assistant professor in the Language & Literacy Education Department at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. At the heart of her work is supporting young people and teachers to engage with texts in ways that build from their lived experiences toward sense-making about themselves, each other, and their communities. Much of her work centers on engagement with multimodal texts, such as picture books, videos, and other media, to navigate conversations about bodies, identities, and belonging. Working across educational settings, including classrooms and after-school spaces, she investigates how such contexts can create room for critical discussions, particularly as teachers and students together negotiate questions of identity and representation in literacy teaching and learning.
She works closely with future educators and partners alongside practicing teachers and schools, primarily in elementary and early childhood contexts, to cultivate culturally sustaining and community-engaged literacy practices. This work has included a multi-year research–practice partnership across literacy and mathematics in four U.S. states focused on rethinking approaches to teacher-centered professional development.
Before joining BU Wheelock, Dr. Caasi held several roles in both K–12 and higher education. She served as a K–5 district instructional specialist in Denver Public Schools, where she coached school leaders and supported district-wide curriculum implementation. She has taught 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades in the Bay Area, the Maryland/DC region, and the Denver metropolitan area. She has served as a Column Co-Editor for Responsive Teaching in Action in Language Arts, a peer-reviewed journal of the National Council of Teachers of English.
pronouns: she/her
Recent News
Education
PhD, Literacy Studies & Teacher Learning, Research and Practice, University of Colorado Boulder
MAT, Elementary Education Multiple Subject Concentration, University of Southern California
BA, Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Selected Publications
Glenn, W.J., & Caasi, E. (accepted, in press). From Discomfort to Possibility: How Non-Sporting Preservice Teachers Experience Sports Literature. English Education. (National Council of Teachers of English).
Schwartz, L. H., Aguirre-Ortega, B., Caasi, E., Jacob, D., & Wagenknecht, L. (2025). Aprovechando funds of knowledge with the engaged arts and humanities student scholars: creating equity-oriented zones of collaboration/Aprovechando los fondos de conocimiento con investigadoras comunitarias en formación en artes y humanidades: creando zonas igualitarias de colaboración. Studies in Psychology: Estudios de Psicología, 46(1-3), 706-728.
Stillman, J., Staley, S., Tetu, E., Hedrick-Shaw, D., & Caasi, E. (2025). Learning to “sit in the messiness”: Leveraging critical and queer pedagogies in teacher educator development. Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 127(9-10), 67-100.
Caasi, E. & Glenn, W. J. (2025). (Re)inscribing ideologies: Examining ideological positioning of Black women athletes in nonfiction for children and young adults. Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 49(4), 340-363.
Caasi, E. (2024). The body as pedagogy: Exploring literacies of the body in children’s literature. Language Arts, 102(1), 20-32.
Caasi, E., Yerkes, E., & Dutro, E. (2023). Movement between content and process in teachers’ collective sensemaking about discussions of gender and sexuality in elementary classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 126, 104011.
Dutro, E., & Caasi, E. (2023). The Extraordinary Ordinary in Trauma-Responsive Literacies toward Justice. Language Arts, 100(6), 467-471.
Glenn, W. J., & Caasi, E. (2022). Gendered assumptions in the framing of fitness in sports nonfiction for young adult readers. Children's Literature in Education, 53(1), 76-96.Caasi, E., & Dutro, E. with Simpson, T., Torres, F., & Venet, A. S. (September 2022). Reimagining our responsive pedagogical toolbox: Lessons learned from online and blended learning. Language Arts, 100(1), 59–62.
Caasi, E., & Dutro, E. with Campano, G., Handsfield, L. J. Luong, Q., Sykes, Z., Toliver, S.R., Patricia Valente, P., & Wan, C. (July 2022). The many shapes and possibilities of learning with and in community: Connecting across literacy educators and contexts of collaboration. Language Arts, 99(6), 421-425.
Caasi, E., & Dutro, E. (2022). Responsive Teaching on the Move: Locating Movement in Text through Read Alouds about Sports. Language Arts, 99(4), 259-262.
Dutro, E., & Caasi, E. (2022). Seeking Poetics and Seeing Brilliance in Children's Writing across Genres. Language Arts, 99(3), 205-208.
Dutro, E., & Caasi, E. (2021). Embracing the both/and of Antiracist Pedagogies: A Dialogue in Letters. Language Arts, 99(1), 64-67.
Selected Presentations
Dutro, E., & Caasi, E. (April, 2025). Unsettling discussions: Teachers’ shared practice toward disrupting assumptions about classroom talk [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
Dutro, E., & Caasi, E. (April, 2025). Listening to the friendly ghosts: Embracing the past to move within the present in RPPs [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
Kneeland, J., Kent, C., Glaws, A., & Caasi, E. (2023). Humor, Healing, and Hope: Leveraging Comedy for Connective Secondary Literacy Spaces. Presented at the Colorado Language Arts Society Regional Fall Conference in Denver, CO.