MCTE Fall 2026 Conference

“The Future is Now” roundtable session provides space for undergraduate/graduate students and new teachers to share their innovative classroom research and creative teaching ideas. Attendees will hear 2-3 presentations and participate in a discussion on the topic(s). An inviting, inclusive space that highlights the newest voices in our field.

This interactive session explores Shakespeare through ecology, climate, and place-based teaching. Participants will analyze how storms, landscapes, and environmental disruption shape plays, such as Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest while pairing the Bard with contemporary eco-literature and Michigan-centered classroom activities connected to land, storytelling, and environmental imagination.

Effective assessment helps students understand and take ownership of their learning. It’s important to recognize that students enter classrooms with long histories shaping how they value language. Our challenge as teachers, then, is to consider how assessment practices can help us and our students align our values together.

This workshop grounds identity work in place-based pedagogy. Using the Social Identity Wheel, media literacy analysis, and a “Rewrite the Narrative” writing activity, participants examine how intersecting identities — race, gender, sexuality, ability — shape how students are seen in their communities and classrooms, and practice writing more liberatory, place-affirming student stories.