Innovation Celebration 2024

Efraín Tovar, a Texas native raised in Kingsburg, California, is a prominent educator with a strong advocacy for plurilingualism/pluriculturalism. He currently serves as the ELD Department Chair in the Selma Unified School District, teaching 7th and 8th grade Newcomers/LTELs. With over two decades of experience in education, Tovar is a highly sought-after speaker at local, state, national, and international conferences. He specializes in leveraging technology to address the linguistic and digital needs of plurilingual scholars and their parents. Tovar is the founder and executive director of the California Newcomer Network, connecting and empowering educational leaders working with Newcomers in California and beyond.

His achievements include being one of two U.S. educators selected for the Google for Education Certified Innovator Program in 2016 in Mexico City and was one of thirty educators from around the world to participate in Stanford University's dSchool summer institute for design thinking in 2019. He was also honored as the Teacher of the Year for Selma Unified School District in the same year. In 2022, Tovar was chosen as one of 12 U.S. educators  selected for the MetaMetrics Lexile & Quantile Educator Ambassador program, and in 2023, his innovative teaching methods for Newcomers were featured on Edutopia. He received the 2023 CUE Outstanding Educator of the Year award, and PBS highlighted his groundbreaking teaching methods in a feature on PBS KVIE-Inside California Education, recognizing his exceptional contributions to education.