Christobelle Tan (Belle) is a Transformative SEL Project Specialist with the Whole Child and Community Design Department at San Diego County Office of Education. Her role is to support districts, schools, and teachers in creating safe, effective learning environments that support the whole child through providing resources, strategies, tools, technical assistance, professional development, and fidelity assessments.
Born and raised in Malaysia, Belle, along with her family of seven, moved to the United States when she was 17. Despite having cultural, economic, and academic setbacks, Belle succeeded due to the empowerment of her support system and through gaining confidence in her mathematics abilities. This realization was the backbone of why she decided to pursue a college education and become a mathematics teacher. Belle earned her Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics – Secondary Education, Master of Education, and Teaching Credential at University of California, San Diego. She has worked over 10 years as a Mathematics and Advisory/University Preparation Teacher with 6th through 12th grade low-income, marginalized students to be the first in their families to go to college, like herself. In addition, she was a keynote speaker at UCSD Noyce Programs 1st Annual Conference and has presented at many state and regional conferences including the California Mathematics Council Conference on empowering teachers in the classroom. In her teaching career, she has been recognized as the La Jolla Golden Triangle Rotary Club Educator of the Year and Outstanding UCSD Triton Teacher of the Year. Additionally, she was a recipient of the Janet Hageman Chrispeels Doctoral Fellowship and University of California, San Diego Robert Noyce Scholarship.
She is currently a doctoral candidate at UCSD and CSUSM and her research interests are on Trauma-Informed Care and Peer Coaching relationships.