MCTE Fall 2026 Conference

This interactive workshop applies TESOL principles to college-preparatory and first-year college writing instruction, addressing how academic language barriers prevent students from successfully transitioning to higher education discourse. Participants will collaboratively define academic vocabulary to help 11th-14th grade students navigate college-level writing expectations and claim agency in academic spaces.

Two educators, along with a literacy consultant and published author, share how novels-in-verse serve as mentor texts for students crafting their own verse novels on self-selected historical topics. By centering student autonomy, this collaborative model helps students discover voice, explore perspective, and write stories history has overlooked.

This presentation showcases examples of humanizing, responsive, and place-based pedagogy within a youth prison. Specifically, the educators demonstrate how relevant texts, centering student voice, and authentic writing are supportive of incarcerated student learning. Teachers from all contexts will be able to implement humanizing classroom practices shared in this presentation.

In this session, attendees will explore a theory of identity and a humanizing approach to curriculum known as “Constellations of Care.” Attendees will be able to learn and collaborate new writing strategies, approaches to their curriculum, and develop their own understandings of their respective constellations of care.