This interactive session explores adolescent brain development, executive functioning, literacy instruction, and translanguaging through the lens of culturally sustaining and anti-racist pedagogy. Participants will consider and weigh routines and strategies that support students’ emotional well-being, identity development, reading, writing, and sense of belonging during this critical period of neuroplasticity.
How can elementary students discover that their stories, communities, and voices matter? This session explores how place-based writing practices can strengthen writing identity and engagement for young writers in both classroom and after-school settings. Participants will experience authentic writing invitations rooted in students’ lived experiences, examine how free-choice writing nurtures agency and confidence, and learn how offering prompt choices—even for kindergarten students—supports ownership and stamina. Attendees will leave with practical strategies, adaptable writing routines, and student-centered ideas for helping children write themselves into the world around them.
After 25 years in public education, my passion and dedication to do what is best for students and teachers continues to grow. I have experience teaching in traditional and Montessori classrooms, was a reading teacher, literacy coach, and now literacy consultant. I have been with Red... Read More →
In this interactive session, participants will examine how generative AI represents Michigan places, communities, and language practices. Through a place-based AI audit and writing activity, participants will develop classroom strategies that can help students critically read technology, challenge deficit narratives, and write toward more just representations of their homeplaces.
This practitioner inquiry examines staff morale and school culture within an urban Detroit high school through anonymous surveys and participatory reflection activities. Centering educator voice, the session looks at how structured and informal feedback practices can surface tensions that are often not spoken directly, while also making space to rebuild trust and strengthen relationships among staff. The work connects these practices to efforts to support antiracist school improvement rooted in shared responsibility, care for one another, and holding the institution accountable for what staff experience day to day.
