Information and Registration

Workshop 1: Reading Between the Brushstrokes: Cultivating Curious Thinkers Through Curious Conversations About Art (all grades) with Nawal Qarooni Casiano

• About this workshop: Teaching children to ask questions about art is no different than teaching them to ask questions about the world. Criticality muscles are transferable – from art, to alphabetic text, and beyond. In fact, teaching students to visually respond to art by answering seemingly simple questions often spurs rich debate and discussion. The processes in the brain that build connections between what we see and what we infer; what we discuss and what we question replicate the very same reading understandings too. Teachers might ask students to also look closely at movement, proximity between objects and people, use of light and dark colors, and facial expressions. They might make personal connections. Students will make inferences and name what story the art tells, determining why the artist created it in the first place. Carving out space to let students grapple with what they notice, including injustice and unfair societal realities. Reading art evens the playing field, so that no child is left out of the discussion.
• About the presenter: Nawal Qarooni Casiano is an educator, literacy coach and writer who supports dozens of schools in a holistic approach to literacy instruction. The proud daughter of immigrants, mothering four young multiethnic kids very much shapes the way she understands education. She is a former newspaper reporter and is a contributing writer for We Need Diverse Books in addition to the teaching blogs Choice Literacy and Two Writing Teachers. You can find her reading aloud to her kids, biking around Chicago’s Logan Square, or on Twitter @NQCLiteracy. Learn more about her work at NQCLiteracy.com.

Workshop 2: Remixing Visual Art Using Critical Visual Literacy (Elementary) with Laurie Rabinowitz and Dr. Amy Tondreau

• About this workshop: We will share two strategies for implementing critical visual literacy. First, we will model questioning and critiquing traditional, Western visual art and the metanarratives it perpetuates. Then, we will share examples of artists who have used remix and reconstruction to create more inclusive images that convey counternarratives. (e.g. multiple reimaginings of Washington Crossing the Delaware). The emphasis on visual mediums as texts provides access for students who use a variety of linguistic practices to engage in critical literacy. We invite participants to develop their own visual reimaginings and consider how to apply these practices to their own contexts.
• About the presenters:
  • Laurie Rabinowitz is a faculty member in Literacy and Reading at the Graduate School of Education at the Bank Street College of Education. She teaches literacy courses for elementary education with an inclusive framework including how disability labeling impacts student experience in the literacy classroom. Previously, she was a special education teacher at a public school in New York City. She is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University.  Her research interests include teacher perspectives on inclusive practices, the representation of disability identity in children’s literature, supporting teachers in developing critical literacy teaching practices and the cross-pollination of Universal Design for Learning and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. Rabinowitz holds an MA in Education Leadership from New York University and a MS in Special Education from Hunter College.
  • Amy Tondreau is an Assistant Professor of Literacy in the Eriksson College of Education at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. She teaches undergraduate literacy and social studies methods courses, as well as graduate reading specialist courses in action research, writing pedagogy, and culturally sustaining teaching practices. Tondreau previously worked as a staff developer and writer for the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Columbia University. Her research focuses on teachers’ and students’ writing identities, critical literacy in children’s literature and writing pedagogy, professional learning communities, and the cross-pollination of Universal Design for Learning and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in literacy pedagogy.

Workshop 3: Using Creative Expression for Assessments (Middle Grades & High School) with Brendaly Torres

• About this workshop: In this workshop, participants will discuss culturally responsive-sustaining strategies and project-based planning that affirm and center the identities of students and their families that support community activism and empowerment. Participants will also investigate how the Arts are applied to create Performance-Based Assessment Tasks (PBATs) that integrate digital tools, asynchronous communication, and collaboration while encompassing student choice and voice for Multilingual Learners.
• About the presenter: Brendaly Torres is a Bronxite who has been serving her community as an educator for over a decade. As a lifelong learner, she is passionate about designing tools for differentiation and curriculum to meet the needs of Multilingual Learners. She is currently an ENL and Literacy teacher at International Community High School, a progressive project-based learning public school, situated in the vibrant South Bronx. As an avid reader herself, her goal is to inspire a love of literacy and learning in all students and teachers she works with.

Workshop 4: Conociendo Autoras/es: Multilingual Creative Computing in Language Arts (Middle Grades & High School) with Dr. Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Dr. Sara Vogel and Ana Rebeca Castillo M.

• About this workshop: How might using code and computer science enhance the conversations that emergent bi/multilingual students have in Language Arts? In this workshop, representatives from the Participating in Literacies and Computer Science (PiLa-CS) research practice partnership will share examples from a creative computing unit where students leveraged multilingual and multimodal resources from their translanguaging repertoires — including oral and written language, code, drawings, images, knowledge of pop culture, media, and literature — to create interactive digital projects featuring dialogues with authors and artists. We will share how engaging with computing, language arts, and youth culture syncretically while incorporating the arts (Gutiérrez, 2014) sparked productive tensions and helped students come to deeper understandings across and beyond those three domains.
• About the presenters:
  • Dr. Laura Ascenzi-Moreno earned her Ph.D. in Urban Education with a focus on bilingual education. She is currently an associate professor and the bilingual program coordinator at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Dr. Ascenzi-Moreno’s research is focused on the literacy development of emergent bilinguals, the literacy assessment of emergent bilinguals, the development of teacher knowledge, and how these intersect with equity. She is particularly interested in investigating how to shift and reimagine monolingual literacy instruction by centering it on children’s multilingual and multimodal practices. Dr. Ascenzi-Moreno’s articles can be found in Language Arts, The Reading Teacher, the Journal of Literacy Research, Literacy Research and Instruction, Voices from the Middle, among others. She co-authored, Rooted in Strength: Using Translanguaging to Grow Multilingual Readers and Writers (Scholastic, 2021) with Dr. Cecilia Espinosa.
  • Dr. Sara Vogel is a born-and-raised Brooklynite, a digital media and bilingual educator, and an education researcher who focuses on the intersection of bilingual, social justice, and computing education. She is currently faculty in the Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) residency program at Bank Street College and an Associate Research Scientist at New York University with the National Science Foundation funded project, Participating in Literacies and Computer Science (PiLaCS), which supports bi/multilingual students to participate in Computer Science for All initiatives. She has a PhD in Urban Education from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
  • Ana Rebeca Castillo Matos is a Spanish bilingual teacher, and a graduate of Hunter College (CUNY) Masters in Education program.  She is certified in Childhood Education (1st-6th) with a bilingual extension (K-12th). It is her belief that being bilingual is an asset because language is culture, and it allows us to broaden our worldview.  As an educator, she believes education is the tool that will help our students break barriers and cycles of disadvantage in order to become the leaders our future will need. In order to achieve this, she draws inspiration from Paulo Freire’s pedagogy in which students aren’t “tabula rasa”, but full of knowledge. This belief in making relevant connections between what students know and what they will learn is one of her core educational values. You can find her on social media @pecesconmar.

Workshop 5: From Photographs to Words to Politics: Building Language and Learning Migration through the Visual Arts (All Grades) with Dr. Tatyana Kleyn and Yauzin Martínez García

• About this workshop: This workshop will use black and white photographs from the forthcoming book, “Living, Learning and Languaging Across Borders: Students Between the US and Mexico” to have educators think about how images can be used as a tool for building language and learning about the realities of (return) migration. It will show how looking deeply can bring about new ways of seeing and speaking about the world. Educators will also consider how photography can be used in their settings to spark conversation, especially about topics that can be contentious, but important to our students’ realities and communities.
• About the presenters:
  • Tatyana Kleyn is Associate Professor in Bilingual Education and TESOL at The City College of New York. She received an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University. Tatyana is Principal Investigator for the City University of New York – Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE). She served as president of the New York State Association for Bilingual Education and was a Fulbright Scholar in Oaxaca, Mexico. “Living, Learning and Languaging Across Borders: Students Between the US and Mexico” is her latest book. Tatyana’s films include the “Living Undocumented Series,” “Una Vida, Dos Países” and the “Supporting Immigrants in Schools” video series.
  • Yauzin Martínez García graduated from the University of Oaxaca in 2014 with a Bachelor’s degree in Language Teaching. She is currently an English language instructor for undergraduate students at the same university. Yauzin has also worked as an English teacher in two public elementary schools in Oaxaca, Mexico with students from first to sixth grade. She has served as a research assistant for a study on transborder students between the US and Mexico and held administrative roles to college faculty.

Workshop 6: Bringing The Power of Art/Drama Into Our Writing (Middle Grades & High School) with Emily Strang-Campbell

• About this workshop: To model and explore different visual, poetic and dramatic techniques kids can explore during their writing process. We will explore techniques such as writing in role, pausing in poetry, tableax and other visual moves as a way to bring in more student voice and choice, while also exposing them to multiple entry points into the writing process.
• About the presenter: Emily Strang-Campbell began her teaching career as a middle school teacher in New York City, after earning her Master’s Degree from New York University, with a dual certification in Educational Theatre and English in the secondary classroom. Her middle school classroom became a host for instructional lab sites for teachers from around the country. Her work led her to the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, where she worked as a staff developer for ten years. Emily has co-authored two middle school Units of Study Books: Research-Based Informational Writing and Social Issue Book Clubs: Reading for Empathy and Advocacy.

Workshop 7: Youth Scribes: Teaching a Love of Biliteracy Writing Now (Middle Grade/ High School) with Dr. R. Joseph Rodríguez

• About this workshop: In this session, the presenter will guide teacher participants to dialogue with adolescents to build their scribal identities and move them toward the process of writing as invitation to create, become, and belong. By increasing their stamina as scribes over time, the teacher-author realizes that students just want to write if they are invited and permitted to do so—by and with their teacher in conversation.Choosing to see students as scribes with diverse abilities, backgrounds, biliteracies, and interests, the session will focus on the scribal behaviors, habits, and identities of both teachers and students that can come alive in the process of writing and invention by:
  • a. building and cultivating a scribal community of adolescents and teachers who write via scribe-driven community;
  • b. curating artifacts that students create as their scribal stories of writing with rhetorical acumen and literacies;
  • c. amplifying a teacher stance of antiracism for equity and to honor students’ cultures;
  • d. valuing the inventiveness and scribal process of adolescents as they write—in and out of school; and
  • e. recommending approaches, feedback, and practices that expand writing opportunities for today’s adolescents.
• About the presenter: R. Joseph Rodríguez is a literacy educator, researcher, and author of Enacting Adolescent Literacies across Communities: Latino/a Scribes and Their Rites (Lexington Books, 2017), Teaching Culturally Sustaining and Inclusive Young Adult Literature: Critical Perspectives and Conversations (Routledge, 2019), and several academic articles, book chapters, critical essays, and narrative poems. Joseph teaches secondary English language arts and reading and is a teacher educator at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He is coeditor of English Journal, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. Joseph enjoys cooking, hiking, kayaking, storytelling, and traveling with the love of his life. Contact him via Twitter @escribescribe or email at escribescribe@gmail.com.

Workshop 8: Critical Media Literacies: Lovecraft Country Analysis in a High School Classroom (High School) with LaMar Timmons-Long

• About this workshop: Throughout this session, participants will discuss how to incorporate critical media literacy within their classes to help students with learning various literacy skill sets. Teachers will learn strategies and activities they can use with students through media, discussion and writing.
  
• About the presenter: LaMar Timmons-Long is a vibrant educator who believes that every student deserves access to an equitable and high-quality education. LaMar provides support to elementary, middle, and high school educators on the intersections between literacy, social justice, language, and students experiencing disabilities. As an English teacher, he focuses on using culturally responsive pedagogical strategies and practices, centered around adding diverse voices and experiences, throughout his instruction. A key piece of his culturally responsive literacy work, is to tirelessly strive to ensure students achieve academic success… and they do. LaMar brings expertise in secondary literacy practices, including literacy practices which support students experiencing learning disabilities and students learning English as a new language. LaMar teaches English in New York City.

Workshop 9: Latina Girls Rising: Centering & Amplifying Latina Girls Experiences through Young Adult Literature & Art (Middle Grades & High School) with Dr. Tracey Flores, Yaikira Vazquez, and Maria Sanchez

• About this workshop: As Women of Color, educators, teacher educators, and researchers, we draw upon our experiential knowledges and learning alongside our students to engage participants in dialogue about the importance of centering the knowledges and stories of Latina girls for more culturally sustaining approaches to teaching reading and writing the word and the world. It is critical to provide Latina girls with access to texts and instruction that center their cultural and gendered ways of knowing and being. Our girls deserve a literacy curriculum that connects them to the perspectives of Latinx youth, both contemporary (e.g., Edna Chávez, Emma González) and historically (e.g., Jovita Idár, Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz) who are using and have used their writing, stories, and voices as a platform to seek justice and promote change. We share stories form the #ChicasFuertes book club in which Latina middle school girls read and discussed books with Latina protagonists while creating art to capture their connections and perspectives. We share personal testimonios and classroom artifacts to illuminate the voices of our students while offering suggestions for practice and continued research.
• About the presenters:
  • Dr. Tracey T. Flores is an expert in Family and Community Literacies and literacy instruction for multilingual students, in both K-8 school settings and community spaces. Tracey believes in the transformative power of reading and writing to change lives, to help us understand our experiences, to heal, to imagine our futures and to build community. Currently, Tracey is an assistant professor of Language and Literacy at the University of Texas at Austin where she teaches Language Arts Methods and Community Literacies in the K-5 teacher education program. Her research focuses on Latina mothers’ and daughters’ language and literacy practices, the teaching of young writers in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, and family and community literacies.

Workshop 10: Movimientos Sociales y Activismo: Literacy and Creation through the Arts (High School) with Michaela McCaughey and Jen López

• About this workshop: A text is not just the written word, though we do lots of reading and writing in and out of class. A text can be a song, a protest, a movement. We will share how we use different media to learn about social issues and movements, and create our own responses in writing and art. There will be a focus on writing, music, and graphic design both in texts analyzed and texts created. Examples will be given in Spanish and English.
• About the presenters:
  • Michaela McCaughey is a high school Spanish Heritage teacher in Providence, Rhode Island. Her students are creative artists who push and inspire her. Within her educational philosophy she focuses on social justice issues, culturally responsive and critical pedagogy, arts-integration, and (bi)literacy.
  • Jen López  teaches Heritage Spanish and English at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis, MN. Over the years, she has worked to transform her Heritage Spanish program to focus on critical (bi)literacy skills that transfer to different courses and areas of students’ academic and personal lives. She blogs about her workshop classroom at https://growingwithheritagelearners.home.blog

Workshop 11: The Use of Critical Literacy Practices to Nourish a Humanizing Pedagogy in a Dual Language Classroom (Early Childhood) with Dr. Sandra L. Osorio, Jeanette Delgado, and Emma Lewis

• About this workshop: The case study presented here explores the implementation of critical literacy practices in a first and second-grade Spanish dual language in a small urban community in the Midwest. A critical literacy pedagogy was adopted as a lens by the teacher as part of a professional learning community (PLC) where she learned along with four other teachers how to support early childhood students in reading the word and the world (Freire & Macedo, 1987) through read alouds. The guiding research question for this study was: How does a dual language teacher create a space for humanizing pedagogy in her classroom during read alouds?
• About the presenters:
  • Sandra is an associate professor in the School of Teaching and Learning at Illinois State University. Previously, she was a bilingual teacher in early childhood classrooms (Preschool-2nd grade) for over 10 years.  She currently supports the preparation of preservice teachers in early childhood, bilingual education, and English as a second language. Her research interests include looking at the implementation of culturally sustaining pedagogies that put student’ dynamic community languages valued practices and knowledges at the center of the curriculum and practices implemented in the classroom. She is currently the editor of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Language Arts Journal and one of the authors of the new book, Book Talk: Growing Into Early Literacy Through Read-Aloud Conversations from Teachers College Press.
  • Jeanette Delgado currently teaches Second Grade Dual Language teacher at Dr. Preston L. Williams Jr Elementary School. She has taught for 7 years. Jeanette is the Elementary Lead mentor for the district and a second grade level leader. Jeanette is a 2020-2021 Teach Plus Illinois Policy Alumni. She graduated from Western Illinois University with a BA in Bilingual-Bicultural Education and Spanish with endorsements in English Language and Social Science and, received her MA from The University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana in Education, Policy, Organization, and Leadership.
  • Emma Lewis currently teaches first grade, Dual Language in Urbana, IL and has taught 2nd grade, Dual Language for two years. She received her bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Illinois Wesleyan University and her Bilingual/ESL Endorsement from Dominican University. She also has experience with English Language Learners grades pre-K to 3rd grade and taught English abroad in Spain for a year.

Workshop 12: Humanizing Language Expansion through Drama (Middle Grades & High School) with Helio Sepulveda, Susanna Brock, and Yusi Gao

• About this workshop: Drama is a potent tool for language teaching. It assimilates everyday situations that contextualize vocabulary and grammar and improves students’ interests and confidence in speaking the target language. This interactive online workshop will offer language teachers techniques and ideas applicable in both regular and online teaching. Participants will be invited to participate in ice-breakers, theater games, and other drama activities to experience this pedagogical approach from the learners’ perspective.
• About the presenters:
  • Susanna Brock is a Swedish, New York-based theater maker, performer, and educator. For the past 14 years, she has had the opportunity to work in many different parts of the world including Stockholm, Paris, Kampala, Nairobi and New York where she has facilitated workshops and performed original theater performances in school and community-based programs. In addition to her work with young people she also develops and facilitates professional development in arts based learning for teachers, administrators, and college students. In 2020 she graduated with a Master’s of Applied Theater from CUNY School of Professional Studies.
  • Yusi Gao was born and raised in China. He is an alumnus of the Foreign language education and TESOL MA program from NYU. He has been working as a Mandarin teacher at the Brearley School in New York City since 2011. He specializes in using drama games to enhance students’ engagement and interest in learning Mandarin. He has presented in professional development conferences for Mandarin teachers around the country.
  • Helio Andres Sepulveda Zornosa is originally from Colombia. He holds degrees in Performing Arts, Applied Linguistics, and Applied Theatre. He holds NYS certifications in TESOL, Spanish, Special Ed (Generalist), and Theatre. He has been a language teacher in a public high school in Queens for more than 10 years. He has served as an adjunct professor in the Linguistics Department of CUNY Queens College guiding pre-service teachers in their student teaching experience. His research focus is in language expansion through performing arts with a translanguaging stace.