JDP Punk: Marva Cappello earns college’s top faculty honor

Picture this: A young punk, fresh off a successful Madison Avenue career, walks into a fourth-grade classroom for the first time since she was an elementary schooler herself.  This time, the classroom is hers.

The school is PS-19 in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. In pre-gentrification 1987, Williamsburg is not a hipster haven but a working-class community made up of Hasidic Jewish and Latinx families. The students in the classroom are mostly Dominican and Puerto Rican by heritage, if not by birth.

On the first day of class, the young punk seats her students and immediately turns to face the blackboard, fighting back tears of joy.

A picture of happiness. 

“I needed a moment to compose myself,” recalls San Diego State University Professor Marva Cappello, the young punk in question. “It just felt like home — like I was meant to be there."

It was the start of a beautiful journey in education. 

Cappello has spent the past 24 years on the faculty in SDSU’s School of Teacher Education where her accomplishments include launching the Center for Visual Literacies and directing the Joint Ph.D. Program in Education with Claremont Graduate University — a program she has led since 2019.

On Aug. 22, at SDSU’s All-University Convocation, she will add another major milestone. Cappello will receive the College of Education’s 2024 recipient of the Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Faculty Contributions.

Ambition and purpose

To understand the Marva Cappello who will be on the stage at convocation, a trip back to the twin epicenters of punk is in order. Cappello was right on the heels of the punk rock movement that had exploded in London and New York in the 1970s — an angry, leather-clad rejection of corporate rock and anything smelling of the establishment.

In 1982, it was London calling. Cappello was attracted across the pond both for creative work — she made records jackets for the agency Hipgnosis and photographed other bands — and to be part of the scene. Like any self-respecting punk adherent, she played bass in a band called Strategic Opposition.

"It was a moment," she says, laughing.

But for Cappello, who was raised on Long Island, it was only a matter of time before she was back in the grit, grime and vibrant creativity of New York City. By 1984, she was working at a Madison Avenue agency as a photo librarian and photography studio manager.

While she may have had a dream job and a killer office, what she eventually found lacking was a sense of purpose or satisfaction.

“Pretty quickly, I grew bored and that's what led me to teaching,” Cappello says. “I met a principal who was like, ‘Just give me a year — I think you're a fourth-grade teacher.’”

Fast-forward to that morning in Brooklyn, with Cappello fighting with her emotions as she faced the blackboard that day. The principal has been right. She had indeed found her purpose.

During her six years as a classroom teacher, Cappello fell in love with the families in her neighborhood. They made her feel like part of the community and would even invite her into their homes for meals. One family had three brothers in her class. Another owned the local bodega.

And, of course, she loved the kids. A few years ago, one of her former students started an alumni Facebook group and asked Cappello to join.

"One of them is a high ranking-official in the Air Force, one of them ran for a council member seat in Brooklyn,” she says with no small amount of pride. “They're all doing great and interesting things. I love my job at SDSU, but probably that was the best job I ever had."

Entry into academia

Cappello’s transition from fourth grade to the halls of academia began when she moved to Los Angeles as her then-husband pursued a motion picture film career. Initially working as a literacy specialist for 2nd- and 3rd-graders, she helped students succeed by putting writing at the center of language arts rather than reading. 

She wrote about it in a local reading association newsletter, which caught the eye of a University of Southern California professor, who offered Cappello a full-ride scholarship into USC’s Ph.D. program in language literacy and learning. 

Another unexpected turn.  

Soon after graduation, as she applied for faculty positions across California, Cappello found herself interviewing at SDSU. One night, during her two-day interview in 2000, she was taken to dinner by legendary SDSU literacy researchers Diane Lapp and James Flood.

“After being with them, I decided that if they offer me this position, this is where I want to be,” Cappello said. “They're both people I had studied! I felt very privileged to be invited."

They offered, and she’s still here.

Today, Cappello’s work centers on visual literacy, which is the ability to analyze literal and inferred meaning in images. She views visual literacy as an equity pedagogy — one that levels the playing field for students such as multilingual learners. Cappello also capitalizes on visuals as a qualitative research methodology, which she puts into practice in both K-12 classrooms and with her Ph.D. students.

“My current research is involved with doctoral students and we're challenging the performative positionality statements that are ubiquitous in education right now,” she explains. “I feel like they're essentialized, like ‘white, middle class, a woman.’ I'm using visuals to help our novice scholars think more deeply about the identities that they bring to their research."

Looking back, Cappello expresses appreciation for influential colleagues such as former JDP directors Rafaela Santa Cruz and J. Luke Wood, Dean Emeritus Joseph F. Johnson Jr., who helped her launch the Center for Visual Literacies in 2014, and STE professor Randy Philipp, who nominated her for the Outstanding Faculty Award.

Still in black

Another thing to know to understand the Marva Cappello who will be on the stage at convocation: That 1980s New York punk ethos and aesthetic is alive and well within her — and in her wardrobe.

“After a few weeks, the students always ask, ‘So, is there a reason you're wearing all black?’ Are you in mourning?,'" Cappello says, grinning.

It’s not an exaggeration. When an SDSU video team contacted Cappello to film her for the awards ceremony, they asked her if she could wear bright colors — or any color at all. She responded with a photo of a closet full of exclusively black attire.

Realizing that this punk wasn’t going to compromise, the video team brought a red chair to the shoot.

Cappello’s creativity has also been passed on to her daughter Nile, who is an executive producer for Max (formerly known as HBO Max) true crime shows "Death in the Dorms" and "The Way Down." The proud mother beams as she talks about her daughter’s accomplishments.

Regarding her own accomplishments, soon to be immortalized at convocation, Cappello admits the young New York punk never pictured this.

"It wasn't even in my sights in any way,” she admits. “I had a different idea about what my life would hold. But this is better than I could have imagined.”