Candidate: Manuel Hernandez

Manuel Hernandez was born in Sleepy Hollow, New York in 1963. He completed undergraduate studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus and finished a Master’s in Education from Herbert H. Lehman College (CUNY) in the Bronx, New York in 1994. He has coordinated symposiums, produced and coordinated television interviews on culturally relevant teaching and its impact in the ESOL classroom. He has done numerous presentations, workshops and seminars on how to integrate Latino/a literature in the English classroom. In 2014, he participated in a TedxTalk (Connections) at Southern New Hampshire University. He is the author of three books, , Latino/a Literature in the English Classroom (Editorial Plaza Mayor, 2003), The Birth of a Rican (Imprenta Sifre. 2008) and Living the Kingdom with purpose (Divine Purpose Publishing). He is a Language Arts teacher at Osceola School District in Florida. And teaches adjunct at Valencia College at the Poinciana Campus. He was selected Outstanding Faculty/Staff for 2016 at Osceola High School. In his four years at OHS, he was awarded a school wide proposal in 2015 that allowed OHS to present a streamlining video conference from NYC with one of the foremost influential authors, Esmeralda Santiago. His textbook was acquired by the OHS as a reference reader for students and teachers. In 2017, he started a book series (in-house) titled Coming to America. The new chapter to the book will be published in 2018. He is married to Maria Ortiz Rodriguez for the last 30 years and is the father of two boys: Jose Manuel (28 years old) and Josue Esteban (12 years old).