conferences & events
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Dr. Roop’s photo courtesy of University of Pittsburgh Times
“Connected Learning: Fostering Authentic Literacies”
In this interactive session, Western Pennsylvania Writing Project director Laura Roop explores current challenges in English Language Arts teaching, and lays out several ways to move forward, collectively, toward a vision of teaching and learning that can engage and inspire. She’ll be drawing on her recent NCTE co-authored book, Doing and Making Authentic Literacies, as well as the National Writing Project and its initiatives.
Laura Roop, director of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, is new to the region. She directed the Oakland (MI) Writing Project for eighteen years in separate stints, and served as director of outreach at University of Michigan School of Education. She began her professional career as a high school English teacher, and eventually worked as an intermediate school district consultant in two counties and as a professional development facilitator for the Michigan English Language Arts Framework Project, a federally-funded state standards effort. From 2009-2012, she followed a cohort of students assessed in the bottom quartile from ninth grade through college, designing summer programs and organizing trips and presentations under the auspices of the Algebra Project, a national network founded by civil rights organizer and mathematician Bob Moses. On July 23, Dr. Roop was featured in the University of Pittsburgh Times (photo here credited to this article). See more about the WPWP at https://www.wpwp.pitt.edu/.
Click the Workshop Leader's name for the Workshop's location in the Convocation Center and for the Workshop's handouts.
KURT KEARCHER, PhD
Co-founder and co-chair of the English Education Collaborative, Kurt Kearcher is an expert in literacy, writing centers, and the teaching of writing. Now chair of the California University of PA English Department, Dr. Kearcher will be leading a workshop with Jess Hathaway, a local teacher and former Cal U writing center tutor. Dr. Kearcher will share best practices in peer review.
CONNIE MONROE, PhD
Chair of Graduate Education at Cal U, Dr. Monroe is an expert in English education, a member of the boards of the English Education Collaborative and Scholastic Art and Writing of Southwestern PA.
Dr. Monroe and Jessica Lamb will be leading a workshop on implementing young adult literature in secondary classrooms.Over the past decade, young adult literature has exploded as a genre. At the same time, the focus on standardized testing has led many schools to decrease the time spent on free reading and student choice in reading. Young adult literature offers the benefits that come from independent reading and opportunities for differentiation. In this session, we will start with the ideas in Nancy Atwell’s The Reading Zone and explore how young adult literature can support the PA core standards and support writing. We will also spend time exploring the best in young adult literature with a librarian’s guidance. Teachers are invited to share their own favorite works and teaching strategies.
JESSICA LAMB
Jessica Lamb is the Head of Circulation and Young Adult Librarian at the Bridgeville Public Library, where she curates the young adult collection and designs programs that connect teens to art, literature, pop culture, and each other. In her workshop with Dr. Connie Monroe on implementing young adult literature in secondary classrooms, she will provide an overview of the best in young adult literature and share some of her experiences with the teens who read it.
Linda Denstaedt, co-director of the Oakland Writing Project, is a literacy consultant. She serves on the National Writing Project’s College-Ready Writers Program Leadership Team, which developed and supports an Investing in Innovation Program for rural teachers focused on the development of student argument writing. From 2010 to 2014, she worked in an out of classrooms at a high priority school bordering Detroit. She worked collaboratively coaching teachers to become students of themselves and their students as they developed instructional practices, units of study, and formative assessment to accelerate student learning and increase student achievement. In 2002, she retired from Clarkston Community Schools after teaching elementary, middle and high school. At Clarkston, she also served as Director of Writing and supported the professional learning of her colleagues as they collaboratively studied and redesigned the teaching and learning in their classrooms. Recently, Denstaedt, Laura Jane Roop and Stephen Best wrote Doing and Making Authentic Literacies for National Council Teachers of English.
Her workshop with Dr. Laura Roop will highlight proven methods from the NWP that can help area teachers improve as writing instructors.
KRYSTIA NORA, PhD
One of the co-founders and co-chairs of the English Education Collaborative, Krystia is an expert in writing and composition studies, and she regularly presents at national conferences on these topics. Her workshop will discuss writing instruction and the concept of voice, as well as how to run writing workshops, and alternate ways to think about testing in context of greater awareness of Standard American English and American regional dialects. She will integrate into this instructional workshop National Council of Teachers of English publications and her experiences. Get ready to write, think, and explore written voices.
KIMBERLY VANDERLAAN, PhD
Dr. Vanderlaan is secretary of the English Education Collaborative, board member for Southwestern PA's Scholastic Art and Writing, and an active member of the Cal U English Department. With a PhD from University of Delaware, her area of expertise is late nineteenth and early 20th century American literature. Her workshop, "Close Reading and Independent Text Analysis" will include:
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a brief discussion of the significance of literary devices and their definitions (Imagery, Symbolism and Narrative Strategy)
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a reading of the short story (2 pages) "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin, and
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application of literary devices, through a close reading of the story, in the interest of crafting an analysis.
SUSAN RUTLEDGE, PhD
"Your grammar is a reflection of your image. Good or Bad, you have made an impression. And like all impressions, you are in total control." Jeffrey Gitomer
Dr. Morris-Rutledge will be leading a workshop on grammar instruction in the secondary education classroom.Grammar and usage instruction are integral parts of language arts composition and literature instruction. Lunsford and Lunsford (2008) compiled a list of the top twenty most common writing errors writers make such as unnecessary shifts in verb tense. Using a workshop model, this approach will enable the facilitators to contextualize grammar and usage instruction to focus on the function and practical application of grammar within context, so that “sentence craft and sentence appreciation are not trivial pursuits. They engage us in the stringent and salutary exploration of the linguistic resources out of which our lives are made” (Fish 2011, 159). Participant activities will include sentence combining, grammar as it relates to communication, and criteria to teach grammar.
JO BETH MCKEE
Jo Beth McKee is a curriculum specialist at the Intermediate Unit One. Her career in education began as a high school language arts teacher in Brookville, PA. In 2008 she accepted an offer to serve as the lead advisor for Language Arts and Literacy Education at the PA Department of Education (PDE). There she provided statewide leadership in curriculum development, instructional strategies and classroom assessment in the language arts. Jo Beth worked with a variety of projects and grants, including the Standards Aligned System (SAS), the Keystone Exams, the Reading Recovery Initiative, the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Grant (Keystones to Opportunity) and Introducing the Common Core Standards through Formative Assessment. She taught Developmental Reading at Shippensburg University and is currently teaching Content Area Literacy 7-12 as an adjunct professor through the California University of Pennsylvania. Jo Beth is the author of the children’s book Wet, Wet, Wet, edited by Joy Cowley and published by the Hameray Publishing Group.
In their workshop, Jo Beth McKee from Intermediate Unit 1 and Jessica Guess from Bentworth School District will update and review the changes to the PSSA English Language Arts exam. Discussion will include the implications of how these changes are reflected in the instructional shifts predicated by the PA Core Standards, as well as how these changes impact educators.
JESSICA GUESS
Jessica Guess is a seventh grade English Language Arts teacher at Bentworth Middle School, and a 2016 recipient of the National and State Schools to Watch designation in the Bentworth School District. Jessica is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English, the Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts, and is dually certified in English and Elementary Education.
In their workshop, Jo Beth McKee from Intermediate Unit 1 and Jessica Guess from Bentworth School District will update and review the changes to the PSSA English Language Arts exam. Discussion will include the implications of how these changes are reflected in the instructional shifts predicated by the PA Core Standards, as well as how these changes impact educators.
Dr. Brent House is a native of Hancock County, Miss., where, prior to his years in higher education, he was a farmer who raised cattle and watermelons on his family farm. His father, John Bunyon House, was an avid reader when he was away from the fields, and, as a result, Dr. House was influenced to begin a career in English Studies. He still misses his life on the farm, and he will return to farming when he retires from his teaching life, but, until then, he finds that farming and teaching are similar crafts, and he enjoys planting knowledge in the minds of his students at Cal U.
Dr. House will lead a workshop called, “Call Me Ishmael & Other First Words for Poetry.” The goal of the presentation would be to show how poetry can be linked to prose assignments, both reading prose and writing prose.
