Are you looking for the opportunity to spend more time on a topic than a typical Convention session offers? Add a Thursday and/or Sunday half-day workshop to your registration!
Thursday, November 16, 11:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
W.1 Columbus Writing Marathon
Audience: General, Teacher Education
Strand: National Writing Project
After a brief introduction from the founder of the New Orleans Writing Marathon, participants experience a three-hour Writing Marathon, writing and sharing their work in small groups around Columbus before returning to the meeting room to reflect on the process as a community of teachers/writers.
Presenter: Richard Louth
W.2 Connecting Pedagogies: The Art of Developing Culturally and Historically Responsive Lessons and Units
Audience: Middle, Secondary, Teacher Education
Strands: ELATE, LLA, Rainbow
Many want to believe that we can attend two sessions on equity and become experts in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, but that is both false and dangerous. This session offers participants a chance to spend time delving into CSP, auditing their work, getting feedback, and engaging with curriculum writers who have spent years creating and training others in building culturally responsive curriculum.
Presenters: Jacquay Durant, Asifa Geerlings, Vanee Smith-Matsalia
W.3 Creative Community Collaborations: Co-Constructing an Expansive Network of Support with NCTE Leaders to Explore, Expand, and Interrogate Our Literacies
Audience: General, Teacher Education, Research
Strands: Early Childhood Education, ELATE, LGBTQIA+, LLA
The purpose of this workshop is to engage creative, connected, and collaborative networks of support across the nation through the use of emergent strategizing to collectively build toward coalitional liberation. This workshop brings together NCTE leaders to identify methods they may incorporate into literacy teaching and leadership. Facilitators will engage attendees in working to plan action for community collaborations.
Presenters: Nadia Behizadeh, Khadeidra Billingsley, Michael Dominguez, Mara Lee Grayson, Betina Hsieh, Ileana Jimenez, jung kim, Emily Meixner, Joaquin Munoz, Rae Oviatt, Tonya Perry, Darius Phelps, Stephanie Anne Shelton
W.4 Explicit Vocabulary Instruction for the Secondary Education Classroom
Audience: Secondary, Teacher Education
Strand: ELATE
The focus of the Explicit Vocabulary Instruction workshop is to explore and practice a variety of strategies to build a student’s repository of words by providing them with multiple strategies that make them independent vocabulary learners. Workshop participants will put strategies into practice and engage with a variety of resources to support vocabulary instruction.
Presenter: Talia Cotton
W.5 Exploring New Nodes and Pathways of Learning through Digital Literacy Practices
Audience: Middle, Secondary, Teacher Education
In this Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) workshop, participants will engage in digital literacy practices that encourage exploration of new pathways and intersections of learning using digital tools. Attendees will be led through activities centered on writing instruction, video creation, visual literacy, artificial intelligence, and multimodal research.
Presenters: Johnny Allred, Alex Corbitt, Seth French, Megan Kowalski, JC Leishman, Ewa McGrail, J. Patrick McGrail, Jill Stedronsky, Kristen Turner
W.6 Harnessing the Interdependence of Democracy and Literacy for a More Connected, Civic-Minded Community
Audience: General
Strands: Early Childhood Education, LGBTQIA+
Being literate means we imagine possibilities and then listen, speak, read, write, create, and connect. We will look at practices that encourage democratic participation that are developmentally appropriate preK–12 and experience a collaborative and democratic-focused experience firsthand. We’ll reflect on the interconnectedness of literacy, humanizing practices, and democratic learning spaces.
Presenters: Sarah Feigelson, Gravity Goldberg, Renee Houser, Kristine Mraz, Kate Roberts, Maggie Roberts, Amy Trevino
W.7 Humanizing Language and Literacy Education with Dramatic Inquiry
Audience: Elementary, Middle
Strands: Early Childhood Education, LLA
There is an urgent need to humanize language and literacy education as an antidote to the pervasive drift toward dehumanizing standardization. Dramatic inquiry is a drama-, project-, and inquiry-based pedagogy. Its humanizing approach to language and literacy and its transformative potential are illustrated by examples from three teachers in K–8 classrooms who have worked with the university professor.
Presenters: Marie Boozer, Paul Carter, Brian Edmiston, Tracey Bigler McCarthy
W.8 Interaction: Disruptive Pedagogical Practices for Literacy—A Workshop in James Moffett’s Lost Curriculum
Audience: General
James Moffett’s revolutionary curriculum, Interaction, was protested out of publication before it could be widely used. This workshop invites teachers to experience Moffett’s lost curriculum and unruly, yet inspired vision for learning. Teachers will craft, invent, and question their own pedagogy and curriculum. Together, we will consider who and what teaches? How can we learn in the 21st century?
Presenters: Sheridan Blau, Camille Despain, Kathleen Kelly, Jonathan Marine, Shannon Potts
W.9 Literacy Escape: Using Classroom and Digital Escape Rooms to Engage Students in Literacy
Audience: Elementary, Middle, Secondary
Strand: National Writing Project
Escape rooms have become a widespread entertainment experience that individuals of all ages can enjoy. Using hints and clues, participants solve a series of puzzles to complete the objectives of the game and escape the room. In this session, participants will take part in a Literacy Escape room using a novel as an anchor text to address literacy competencies and standards in an engaging setting.
Presenter: Rebecca Harper
W.10 Multilingual Conexiones in the English Classroom: Literacy and Learning In-between Languages and Cultures
Audience: General, Teacher Education
Strand: LLA
Our world is a multilingual ecology. Connecting through bi/multilingual ways of knowing can support and enrich the learning of all our students. This workshop will introduce Learning In-between Languages and Cultures (LILAC), a schema to guide curricular and instructional planning from a multilingual perspective. Participants will explore and brainstorm applications for their own contexts.
Presenters: Rachell Anderson, Olivia Mulcahy
W.11 Queering Literacies: Disrupting Normativity through Queer-Inclusive Classroom Practice
Audience: General
Strand: LGBTQIA+
In this workshop, participants will learn how to disrupt cis-heteronormativity and design queer-inclusive literacy curriculum. Following an overview of gender and sexual diversity in K–12 schools, attendees will explore LGBTQ+ inclusion, questioning, feeling emotional discomfort and joy, and implicating the self as queer pedagogical practices that teachers can apply to work against oppression.
Presenters: Bethy Leonardi, Zander Nowell, Sara Staley
W.12 Strategies for Addressing Book Banning and Attempts to Remove Racial Histories from Teaching in Public Schools and Universities
Audience: General
Strand: Rainbow
This workshop will engage participants in learning strategies for speaking back to book banning and attempts to take down the teaching of racial histories in K–12 and university classrooms. Join us to learn and share strategies from community organizers and activists, and leave with a plan for how to enact strategies in your own spaces.
Presenters: Wintre Johnson, Susi Long, Kindel Nash, Kamania Wynter-Hoyte
W.13 Teach from Your Best Self—How to Thrive in the Classroom
Audience: General, Teacher Education
Strands: ELATE, National Writing Project
Teachers will gain practical, classroom-based perspectives and approaches for maintaining their best selves even under high-pressure classroom conditions.
Presenters: Margaret Perrow, Jay Schroder
W.14 The Two Traditions: Connecting with the History of Literature Instruction
Audience: Secondary, Teacher Education, Research
Strand: ELATE
This workshop, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), introduces NCTE members to “Making the Good Reader and Citizen: The History of Literature Instruction in American Schools,” an NEH summer program for teachers. Participants will frame today’s practices and issues in light of competing 20th century traditions of student-centered and text-centered literature pedagogy.
Presenters: Casey Andrews, Andrea Bastien, Andrew Newman, Jonna Perrillo
W.15 Using AI without Losing Ourselves
Audience: General
Strand: ELATE
How can we use AI technologies to amplify what makes us human? In this session, participants will learn about the growth of artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT (writings) and Midjourney (images) to reflect on their impact in education. How can we take a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to its use?
Presenters: Trevor Aleo, Nick Covington, Chris McNutt
Sunday, November 19, 2:00–6:00 p.m.
SW.1 A Place Where Souls Can Rest: Black Girl Freedom, Liberation, and Emancipation
Audience: General, Teacher Education
Strands: Early Childhood Education, ELATE, LLA, Rainbow
With our workshop, we will emphasize Divine Love and showcase how educators may help Black girls to finally rest and embrace all aspects of (re)cognizing of themselves through the awakening of their true power and purpose when (re)membering (Dillard, 2012), the journeys of their divine ancestors through personal narratives, storytelling, and poetry activities.
Presenters: Marcelle Mentor, Darius Phelps
SW.2 Advocating for Young Adult Literature in Politically Divided Times: Becoming Changemakers
Audience: Middle, Secondary, Teacher Education
How can teachers change the negative public narrative about young adult literature that pervades many communities? In this workshop, participants learn to strategically defend YAL: before an issue arises, in the midst of a challenge, and after restrictions are enacted. Drawing upon lessons from Everyday Advocacy, teachers create an action plan tailored to their own contexts.
Presenters: Jennifer Buehler, Cathy Fleischer, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Hochstetler, Beth Shaum, Steven Zemelman
SW.3 Deep Connections Start with the Inner Work: Identity Journaling and the Path to Culturally Sustaining Practices
Audience: College, Teacher Education
Strands: ELATE, Rainbow
This workshop will share critical thinking prompts for educators to self-reflect and connect with the community they serve, as well as provide resources and activities to encourage collaboration and research to navigate cultural differences and learning opportunities within the classroom. Based on responses to the prompts and reflections on one’s own lives, we will engage in critical discussions.
Presenter: Brittany Powell
SW.4 Reading, Speaking, and Writing about News: Using Local Issues to Engage Students in Their Communities
Audience: Middle, Secondary, Research
Strands: ELATE, LLA, Research Presentation
Explore how local news can be used as a powerful tool to teach reading, writing, and critical thinking skills while serving as a motivational hook to help students seek out information and connect with peers and the broader community. The featured unit can be tailored to meet the needs of any classroom and provides ample opportunities for cross-curricular collaboration and community involvement.
Presenters: Sarah Bargardi, Rebecca Bush, Florian Feucht
SW.5 Take Out Your Phones: Using Multimedia to Teach Foundational Literacy
Audience: Middle, Secondary
Teachers from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will present strategies for how to use everyday media, including smartphones, a Netflix account, free online pop culture resources, and a variety of YA, canonical, and media texts to teach English language arts curriculum outcomes. Participants will see new media used to teach close reading, argumentative writing, researching, and more!
Presenters: Trevor Aleo, Sarah Jerasa, Karis Jones, William Kist, Laverne McLain
