The presenters, a retired English Education professor and a seventh grade ELA teacher, describe their two-year alliance as team educators, providing detailed steps for developing similar initiatives. Participants are invited to engage with the presenters (and each other) to consider the unexpected, enriching collaborative, volunteer possibilities within their own communities.
This session highlights how cooperating teachers can intentionally support student teachers in building strong classroom relationships. Through practical strategies and shared experiences, participants will explore how mentorship, structured opportunities, and gradual release of responsibility help student teachers establish trust, connection, and presence from the start.
This session examines decolonizing and critical literacy pedagogies that support upper elementary students’ place-making and voice through writing/righting. Drawing on BIPOC picture books as mentor texts, participants analyze writing practices that foreground storytelling, counterstorytelling, and the disruption of stereotypes historically reproduced within conventional Language Arts curricula.
